


The B Side

by tenshisonnet



Series: While We're Young [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Complete, Dean Winchester's Cosplay Fetish, M/M, Mutual Pining, Smut, Third Wheel Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:47:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 49,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29170563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenshisonnet/pseuds/tenshisonnet
Summary: "Only sheets remained on the bed since he relocated and he seemed to shiver under it.  He gathered his extra blanket from the foot of the bed in their room and covered him up to the shoulders.  His breathing was even despite the occasional shakes so climbing into his space would have only woken him, Dean reasoned.  Although it tore at his insides, he tucked the dark green surplus blanket around him and vacated the room.  The sonorous thick clunk of the door closing behind him spilled his writhing heart onto the floor.  Whatever it was plaguing Cas, he wasn’t asking for help to fix it.  The sober itch at his belly slowly curdled into a vague bitterness.  None of this was right."Companion Piece to "The A Side", but can be read right after "Hunt, Chase, Wait" but later chapters contain spoilers.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: While We're Young [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1942201
Kudos: 2





	1. 24 Little Hours

The angel reclined on the couch a couple of feet from Dean running the insides of his finger over his bottom lip lost in the space between his ears. The widescreen TV bounced flashes of light at them in the dark room, playing into the exaggerated expressions leaping on and off of Dean’s face as absorbed as he was in the B-rated science fiction movie Cas barely agreed to watching an hour beforehand. They had just returned from a jaggedly cut mountain state still wearing their disguises which Dean had taken a surprising liking to right away. Taking Dean’s penchant for a good costume into account, it was hardly a revelation. Thinking back, he remembered him obsessing over selecting their Halloween garments on a couple of occasions. The first time, he was adamant Cas wore an authentic rendition of Wyatt Earp’s attire. Cas smirked at the memory of Dean’s slack jawed admiration when he donned its many layers that first Halloween. It was for a case, but that wouldn’t stop him from having fun with it. To this day, Dean’s appreciation of the details amazed him, made his breathe hitch in his throat even though he didn’t need to breathe, not really. 

He flashed a pearlescent smile when an alien struck at the titular hero but entirely missed his dexterous opponent. When his offer of popcorn went without any response, so he returned his attention to this case’s costume: a black slim fit suit with a thin tie and shiny wing tipped shoes. It wasn’t that much different from Jimmy’s attire but was more form fitting. Human fashion changed so quickly, Cas never put much effort into what he wore until the Winchesters cut some things out and added some things into his wardrobe. Funny how rebellion, new allegiances, and button down flannels were so simple to slip into. The hunter broke in his simple jean jacket, tight jeans, and temporary tattoos quickly. Cas assumed part of his delight was in this persona’s artistic disregard for his own vessel. He spent the better part of an hour in the hotel bathroom placing the tattoos large and small in various places. Even after three days of placing and replacing the flourishes for his cover, Cas wasn’t sure he had seen them all. The nervous want in his belly begged to find them all so his eyes were constantly on the prowl. The choices of certain floral motifs on his arms and neck surprised Cas at first, thinking Dean would naturally choose something outwards machismo: pinups and crossed swords or the like. Of course he sprinkled a trap or two in obvious places, but whispers of color popped from between the edges of his clothing in an entirely new alluring way. Where and what else was hiding under his layers? Cas looked down at his own hands, tracing the wiggling words from his second knuckles back into his sleeves. They were so much more obvious this way, but the wide eyed thrill that visibly raced down Dean’s spine when his eyes drank their fill of him was worth the trouble. And trouble it had been.

His steely stare must have been more detectable than his usual lengthy perusals since Dean turned to look at him, bending the orchid tattooed to his neck into a sad wilt. With his hand in the popcorn bowl and a handful of kernels mid-mastication, he tossed a suspicious glint in his direction. “If you stare any harder, I’m gonna take offense at your disinterest in my choice of fine family programming.”

“Says the man who picked a movie based on the still frame of a green skinned lizard man ripping the spinal column out of a CIA agent,” he half smiled sarcastically.

“How could you tell he was CIA?” he backed out to the main page for the film and scanned the image for a clue.

“When Agent Ramos showed the photo of her mysterious murdered partner in an earlier scene, he was wearing the same suit as the remnants of the man in the still,” he recited paying far more attention to the deliciously costumed man next to him who squinted at the screen.

He tossed the remote into the table in front of them in halfhearted exasperation and whined, “Damn Cas! Way to ruin all the dramatic mystery that was building up for the past hour!”

The beleaguered pout resting on Dean’s face drew the angel to scoot closer to him on the couch. “Apologies. I will refrain from ruining the drama of alien lizard men antics in the future.”

“Hey,” he sat upright quickly. “Now you’re just being a dick.”

Cas stole the popcorn off of the table, shoved a handful into his mouth, sulking.

Dean’s expression quickly shifted from vaguely annoyed to moderately worried. “What’s up, man? Pouting isn’t your forte.”

He swallowed the salty kernel mash down and offered the bowl back to Dean in defeat. It was finally easy to be transparent with Dean after all the external and self-imposed conflict between them over the course of their friendship. Nothing he could say or do would make Dean think any less of him, so he should just say it, should just let out the tension as he might have been the only one feeling it up to that point. His suit jacket straightened out as he pushed back into the couch cushions. Dean stared at the small tattoo near his left eye before his gaze traveled over the remnants of hair gel fading from his side parted hair. The attention warmed Cas, but the words he sought still crawled back into his throat before knowing the freedom of open air. Two warm hands wrapped around his limp ones at his knees and angled them towards sincerely wanting mossy irises. His fair untouched fingers lightly gripped his darkly decorated hands, feeling up towards his densely warded wrists. The air around him thinned, forcing him to pull more in to feel the same relief.

“Let me in, Cas,” he pleaded with a whispering grin. Not getting the reaction he sought, he pulled them in to kiss him softly on the forehead. “I can’t help if you don’t spill.”

The solemn thin lips eased at the welcome affection. He had to believe he could salvage the evening from the mess of shitty special effects and his own impatience. “We had a few hour head start home on Sam. After the long drive back from Raleigh, I thought we would take the first opportunity we could to be close… closer than we could be sharing a room with your brother, anyway. I started to think I was the only one who felt that way.” He cast his eyes down at their intertwined hands.

“Ah, fuck,” he retrieved a hand to rub at the back of his neck nervously. “Cas, you gotta know something…”

Sudden apprehension crawled up his spine and down his legs. Whatever it was, he had his fully support. The sentiment was about to fall from his lips when Dean began to ramble, “That first time with you in the garage was so good, Cas. I was walking on cloud nine for days. Even after I found out for one hundred percent sure how receptive you were to me, how much you liked what I could do, I got real nervous. What if that was the best I could do for you? Cas, man, I just don’t want to fuck this up in any way. Your last time was with that reaper, right? So I need to take this at your pace, as slowly as you want to.”

Leaning forward, he brought Dean’s hand to his face, kissing his unblemished knuckles. “I don’t want to take this ‘slow’,” he accentuated with air quotes using his free hand. “I wasted so much of our time thinking useless, unproductive assumptions about you and I were true. Let me prove that I have spent every spare moment thinking about how I can tend to your needs as gratefully as you have tended to mine.” He turned his palm to his lips lavishing kisses on the butter flavored ridges.

A tentative smile cast over Dean’s lips as he watched every little movement against his skin. “God, Cas, you have to know how much I’ve been dying to fuck you in that get up this past week.” His eyes were wide with arousal, taking in every little detail of Cas’s temporary skin. A delicate moan squeaked past his open lips as Cas took one of his digits into his mouth. “I jacked it twice imagining those hands getting me off that last day you were gone. You’re so freaking hot, Cas.”

Cas could have fed off of those little whines of want for days, but he had to get him out of his clothes as soon as possible. Imagining his hunter indulging in his desire for him set his focus on the mystery of the wandering tattoos up to eleven. To his surprise Dean pulled his fingers out of his mouth and launched his lips towards his, gliding them against his insistent on gaining entry. He obliged but quickly ripped his thick jacket off of his shoulders, making fast work of pulling at the bottom of his t-shirt. They separated for just long enough to toss the printed black shirt off into the emptiness of the dark room. Tongues found each other between slick pink lips, wandering past teasing into urgent swipes. He heard himself groan back as Dean reached up to unto his tie, but the Angel halted Dean’s urgent pursuit. Cas stopped his disrobing, but Dean chased his mouth as he withdrew lips. 

Seeing his hesitance, concern crawled across every inch of his face. “Am I going too fast?”

Cas shook his head and looked out into the light of the hall. While they had a head start, he could think of nothing he would hate more than to have the younger Winchester walk in on them. “Hold on,” he grunted.

The older Winchester sat up to watch him leave the room, come back, shut the door behind himself, and brighten up the dimmed lights enough so he could see his face from across the room, but not enough to read his expression. “I’m starting to think it’s not just my movie choices that offended you. Was it something I moaned?” he smirked.

The angel’s imitation of eye roll had gotten a lot of practice over the years, but the reflex was strongest in Dean’s presence. He rested the supplies he gathered on the coffee table in front of the couch, and crouched in front of Dean. A large exhale calmed him, but even in the dim lighting he could see this was a grand gesture. Hopefully all the side missions and hours away would be worth it, in Dean’s eyes. Only way to find out would be to put his heart into this gorgeous temporarily and permanently tattooed man’s hands. The words caught in his throat again as he perused the grand scale birds placed up the right side of his hunter’s rib cage down past the waist of his jeans. How far down did the alluring image flock to?

Luckily clearing his throat dislodged some of his thoughts, “I lied to you about where I was two days ago.” 

Hurt cascaded over his features, but his stoic posture told him he was braced for a colossal emotional gut punch. 

“Not a big deception, I just needed to be away from you for about 22 hours,” he explained. Even he could tell his explanation left something to be desired once it left his lips. 

Dean looked as if he’d taken a less severe kidney punch. 

“I needed to do a spell.”

“What kind of spell?” he asked with his arms crossed over his bare chest. 

“The ancient Mesopotamians had a ritual for slowing the effects of poisons. They didn’t know it, but it upset the flow of time around gravely afflicted people. I adapted it to work on Angels, but it doesn’t slow poisons, it slows the reflexes of Grace in a vessel.”

“Why in the name of Chuck would you want to do that, Cas?” his spat; his irritation and bewilderment on full display. 

Cas could tell one more misstep would flip the switch on their florescent lamps to a warning danger-inbound red. Dean needed a distraction. He pulled his tie down slowly, making sure the tense man’s eyes followed his fingers like a hungry, slightly disgruntled t-rex. Forest colored irises followed as obediently as he hoped, eyebrows arching upwards as he bore his exposed throat. “The dilation in your pupils upon seeing me with this decoration gave me an idea. I warded a safe location and performed the rite. The ingredients were easy to find; bundled sage, black cardamom seeds, werewolf blood,” he listed off seeing Dean fixate on the tie falling from his hand and buttons pop through holes on his white button down. “Once it was done, I felt the cold air on my skin with clarity like when I was human. Small sensory hairs stood on end in the breeze. Then I went to my appointment time with Jesse. She had a small shop a few miles from the hotel we stayed at in Raleigh.”

Dean licked at his lips, pursing them for a moment as his eyes bounced from his face to his newly exposed chest. Now perched far forward on the edge of the couch, the hunters hands gripped at his knees. The dark swirls peeking from behind the folded seam caught his attention amidst the layered want displayed in technicolor all over his face. “What kind of shop did Jesse run?”

“Sit back and I’ll show you,” he smiled slipping the black jacket off.

“Yes, sir,” he smiled, curiosity beating out irritation completely. Comfortably pushed all the way back onto the couch, he splayed his palms on the dark fabric beside his thighs.

Cas toed off his shoes carefully, pushing them underneath the table. A pleasant buzz squirmed around his belly as he swept the long sleeves of his shirt down his arms, exposing the waterfalls of inked skin beneath. Jagged peaks of weapons and willow branches stretched down the backs of his arms. The heat of Dean’s eyes made him believe for a moment the branches would catch fire. His ribs told an entirely different tale with sweeping scalloped black feathers overlaid with darting swallows and the errant tiny honey bee here and there. 

Dean’s eyes bugged out taking in every detail of newly exposed skin, but his fingers gripped tightly at the fabric of the couch. “Cas what did you…”

Upon sensing the relief and tightly wound desire in his hunter’s eyes, he let all of his apprehension go. His belt soon joined his tie amongst the other clothes piling up on the cold cement floor. “With the spell cast, Jesse was able to tattoo me and my Grace couldn’t repair my skin by reflex. All of my instantaneous healing, superhuman reflexes, and dulled sense of touch are gone,” he pulled one of Dean’s hands up to feel at the raised pink skin, blood rich in an effort to heal itself. 

At first worry rose over the pink flush of his cheeks, but calm permissive delight on Cas’s face eased a tenuous panic in his mind. The largest grin Cas had even seen crept across his face. “You did all this for me?”

Cas could have wept with joy basking in the elated hands roaming over his bruised skin. “I wanted you never to forget our first time being one. It was the first time casting such a spell, so I only have a rough idea of how long it will last.”

The hunter stood and wrapped his arms fully around the angel. Cas could feel the warm devotion and vibrant appreciation vibrating out off of him with a chuckle. The growing erection pressed against him wasn’t bad either. Cas responded to the affection with his own embrace, worshipping Dean’s neck with light kisses. He leaned his head to side to give Cas access to as much flesh as he could want.

“What was your explanation for needing to be tattooed for what… 16 hours straight?”

The angel laughed, delighted by the fingertips roaming his plump backside firmly. “She was surprised by my pain tolerance for sure. After the first eight hours she asked why I needed tattoos that big that quickly. I told her it was like a Make-a-wish for an exceeding old yet incredibly horny teenager.”

A mahogany laugh bellowed out of Dean. “Yeah, well, not as old as you.” Splayed out fingers pressed Cas into another firm embrace. “This is the most awesome, most extravagant thing you could have done for me, but there’s no way our first time wasn’t going to be the best first ever; not better than my first kiss, first time riding in Baby, first time hearing Zepplin, nothing. You’re the best first for me, Cas. ” His lament was solidified by a long kiss on his bare neck.

Cas gripped back just as tightly, ever careful not to hurt or injure his hunter with his superhuman enthusiasm even if it were hampered by the spell. His jackhammering heart slowed in his arms at last.

Dean stepped back to soak in even available inch of his exposed skin but was firmly barricaded by the top button of his pants. Cas nodded cheerfully and let Dean take the lead in stripping the last barriers to his enthusiastically painted bare flesh. He walked behind him and put both palms against his hips inside his pants to guide down the offending garments while caressing the sides of his legs all the way to the ground. The long glide of skin on skin sent a rush of spectacular thrill back up his core. The determined greens studied every feather and leaf and insect inked down his sides and across his back, framing his masculine curves masterfully. Cas felt a labored sigh against the flushed skin of his back. 

“So beautiful… Let me look at all of you,” he nearly pleaded circling around him slowly between the table and the couch. If looks could fill his Grace, he would have been stuffed to the brim for decades off of Dean’s insatiable gaze. Taking in every cranny of his black ink flecked dermis, his arousal grew even more with every full eclipse. “You are so gorgeous like this, Cas. Even without these tats, you are the only thing I want to look at most days. Right now I’m even tempted to let you fuck me,” he half chuckled.

A switch flipped inside the angel’s chest. All the love and adoration Dean lavished on him bounced back a hundred fold and needed a place to go. Hungry kisses wouldn’t do the trick this time; he needed a more visceral way to show him how much his intimate efforts were appreciated. “Sit, now,” he commanded through downcast eyelashes. The first utterances from the wrathful Angel Dean first met had nothing on the aggressive vibrato of the voice he made demands with now.

Any reply he could have mustered was stuck in Dean’s throat like an entire swallow dive-bombed into his slack jawed maw. With weakened knees he practically collapsed into the middle of the couch. Cas pulled the hunter’s impractically tight jeans and boxer briefs off of his hide, barely giving him an instant to lift his rump off of the couch for easier extraction. His eyes grew wide at the desire given voice in his angel’s orders. He watched as Cas’s knees hit the cold cement floor between his open legs inches in front of the couch. Impatient hands ran up his outer thighs to grab ample handfuls of his ass greedily. Dean’s face telegraphed how badly he yearned for the pink tongue that darted out to play on the angel’s lips. When his palms didn’t move at first, a speck of fear appeared between his eyebrows. Catching that alarm, Cas wouldn’t let that discomfort mar their first foray inside each other. His hands glided up his sides and onto his broad shoulders as he climbed playfully to sit on his thighs. Once he undoubtedly had Dean’s undivided focus, he caressed his chin, “There will come a day when I can no longer dam up my perpetual desire to own every part of you, and I will take you. I will fulfill your aching want over and over until I have satisfied your every need to be owned, loved, and used by me. This time, you lay back and let me spoil you. You have done so much for me, changed me for the better, so let me do this for you.”

His wide green eyes remained at attention even has his head bobbed up and down in eager consent. Dean’s anxious hips thrust upward, running his firm affection across the similarly excited angel’s. A base need to be closer overcame him. Their lips worked and bumped as they stroked and grabbed at each other. The deep coil of lust tightened pulling his breath from him faster. An unfamiliar rush seeped into every vein, stirring him up more with every desperate touch or bracing flutter. All at once Dean clambered to still his face and lean the center of his back a few inches away. 

“I told you I’m ready, Dean,” Cas protested.

The blonde fervently shook his head, staring intensely into his eyes. Concern furrowed his brows as his eyes followed the ink on his skin down his torso. The leaves and insects started to glow, plumping up on his skin lightly like skin tanned for 4 hours too many. 

Cas felt the burn and stared at the arms surrounding Dean in horror, pulling the offending appendages off of his love. A dark echo pulsated through his Grace, extracting the pool deep in his loins back up to his head in rising panic. He stepped off of Dean and grabbed from the pile of clothes beside the couch they had left the last time they made out on the couch before their trip to Raleigh. He stumbled into them with all the dexterity of a newborn calf, but he had to get away from Dean as fast as he could. Whatever was happening to him was undeniably dangerous for humans to be in the vicinity of. Dean pleaded for information, a clue as to what was going on, but Cas had no answers. 

Instead of engaging, he yanked the flannel on, catching his reflection in the glass door of movie shelf to his right. A blistering brightness penetrated his irises as if he was summoning his wings to convert a non-believer. The newly inked skin vibrated with pearlescent white, searing the imitation of natural swirls and curves further into his dermis. The blinding pain reverberated between his bones so violently; he sought comfort in the closest place. Instead of a statuesque albeit angry boyfriend towering him over demanding to be let in, he found Dean hunched over on the couch gripping his hair. Memories of Dean trying to escape Cas’s true voice flashed through his mind and he found his lips moving around his teeth. His heart burned with love for the hunter, but his desperate saccharine lamentations fell like hellfire on his ears. Halting his Grace from its wire-crossed slow motion implosion took every cell in his multidimensional being working as one. Focusing the particles of his skin, every molecule at once, his mind pinned his teeth shut, sewed his tongue down to the bottom of his mouth, stilling the Angelic mantra. 

The hunter released his head, his eyes shifting back and forth as if trying to find their natural center again. Words sprinted from his mouth, but none fell on the Angel’s eardrums. Keeping every piece of himself in line took almost every iota of energy he had. He inched his wobbling form back to Dean’s side now that he was more certain he wouldn’t cause his hunter any more discomfort. From the warring expressions of concern on Dean’s face, the hunter was clearly just as frightened as he was, but he had the situation under control now. The lips he just melded with his grimaced and frowned in quick intervals. Those firm arms encircled him, ensuring he kept upright. That calming encapsulation righted every atom of his being to magnetic north and he let loose a puff of relief. As much as his tired face could manage, he smiled at the hunter and kissed his cheek. While he couldn’t say how grateful he was to have Dean there with him through whatever was happening, he couldn’t hazard to utter a syllable of it. Upon parting his lip from his nervous grin, every molecule flipped back to magnetic south, imploding every one of his cells into a burst of light. The power of his Grace’s gravity pulled him to a speck smaller than a quark and every one of his senses went blank.


	2. Indoor Endurance Training

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brotherly conversation.   
> SPOILERS for "Hunt, Chase, Wait". If you haven't read that one yet, you're welcome to pop back in when you're done. I'll hold your spot.

The older Winchester hadn’t been this angry in a good long while. Not only did he have an inexplicable angel sized hole in his home, but a small black speck that hovered right where he opted out of existence in his den. Space around the black speck bent like the round plains of a donut, seeming to pull everything and nothing into it all at once. Dean paced in the hallway outside of the den as he tried Sam on his cell for the eighteenth time. Every so often he peered back through the doorway to make sure the spiteful speck didn’t relocate or eat the couch or whatever angel devouring black holes do. He rewound and replayed the erection inducing afternoon delight at half speed in his mind, dissecting every moment for a witchy influence or hint of whiff of a smidgen of foul play. Not a frame of suspicion was detected. The beep from his voicemail message played again, but this time he chose to leave a message in the most succinct way he knew how.

“Sam, you need to come home right now! Some evil Cheerio portal in the man cave sucked Cas into it and he’s fucking gone, man! Call me back.” He half deflated sigh leaked from him at the phone and he hid it back in his pocket. “Yup, nailed that.”

===============

Driving back down the mountain road from Rufus’s cabin, the cellular gods deemed him worthy of reception again. A glorious week long vacation where he could finally consume protein shakes and healthy burger alternatives without the constant nagging over his food choices was one worth savoring. Every time his brother wrapped his lips around a homemade double cheeseburger with such gluttonous glee, he saw the countdown timer to arterial devastation tick closer and closer to midnight. A life where his arteries weren’t completely obstructed was preferred, so there was nagging in both directions. 

A supply run for groceries and gas for the generator in the tumbledown cabin Rufus left was a day overdue already. The old all-terrain vehicle he took from the Bunker didn’t get the best mileage, but he promised Dean he would haul as many books as he could back with him. Bobby had a wide variety of tomes on everything related to the creatures walking amongst them in his library of course, but after the most recent attack they found a safer home back in the attic level of Rufus’s rebuilt cabin. The year before, they rescued a construction worker from a werewolf attack who insisted they received gratitude in one form or another. The attack resulted in the loss of their home, so the boys offered up Rufus’s old place until it could be rebuilt. Despite its dilapidated entryway and main room, they accepted the temporary accommodations heartily but rebuilt the rooms from the floor up. If they crossed paths again, the brothers would have demanded they accept repayment, even if it was just for supplies, but they never saw them again. With some of the updated wiring and weather proofing, it was a decent cabin to run amok in, even if Sam was never known to be such an agent of chaos left to his own devices.

After they disposed of the raijyuu, the electronics in the Bunker ceased to spontaneously act up, but one element still remained problematic weeks after: Cas’s Grace. While they took Cas’s word that the energy from the raijyuu battery was harmless as gospel, Sam for one wasn’t so love struck as to ignore the pull of the unknowable. In retrospect he was blinded by relief that his electric elemental gestation period truly ended. It was stupid not to ask more questions about the possible side effects of a foreign power melding with Angelic Grace. Not all preternatural powers were compatible in practice. While the inherent power of rum does a mighty ditty when mixed with tequila, the digestive pyrotechnics weren’t worth the mixture in Sam’s experience. Seeing Dean and Cas so happy over the past few weeks warmed Sam’s bones after so much turmoil, even if it was self-imposed. But just like his older sibling warned after each major win, there had to be a price for success. They had to pay for good fortune with something or someone they treasured. All Sam could do was hope this personal win was just on a tab with a very forgiving divine bartender.

In the first days of their elemental free lifestyle, things were relatively calm, for two hunters and an angel anyway. No major cases stole their attention, but various calls for established lore between pages in the library came from hunters from four different states. It was a higher volume than they were used to, but no creatures involved were so rare that they dedicated more than a couple days to scrape up the lifesaving materials. For them, it was downright serene to be homebound for that long, well without the fear of being electrocuted if they stepped foot outside of the bunker or similar constraints. 

Once the enamored pair returned from their inordinately long trip to buy new tires for Baby, the gremlins began visiting. Much to his chagrin, the problems primarily affected Sam’s belongings. The first incident involved his phone, left unintentionally on the kitchen table during dinner. He searched under couch cushions, near often used outlets, and practically turned the library upside down in search of the device. A hunter was waiting for the list of components needed for a spell to cast out a Brownie from a lively Northeastern town but Dean didn’t have the hunter’s number so finding his phone was paramount. A few moments before he entered the spotless kitchen, he heard his brother and Cas laugh down the hallway as if they had just finished eating. Dean eating and Cas watching was more likely. There on the corner of the table by the wall, he spotted the shiny black rectangle only to find it had entirely reset; only a backlit black screen revealed it was even powered on. 

The second incident was less innocent. Sam had just returned from a several hour supply run purposefully timed to give the lovebirds ample profound-bonding time. He even knocked on the door to Dean’s man cave before walking in on his brother and the angel a second before removing their shirts on the couch. He tried to back out of the room, not make a big deal of it, but Dean insisted on all three of them vegging out to his top four underappreciated horror films from 1993-1997 in reverse order of importance. Even after letting the room – Chuck help him – air out, a background discomfort radiated around him. The fact that his brother and best friend were all up in each other’s business the moment before wasn’t what was bugging him. They earnestly tried to maintain respectful boundaries around him, Dean’s obnoxiously and transparently flirting with Cas in front of him to make him uncomfortable aside. A vague prickliness poked at Sam at odd intervals, like an anomalous allergic reaction. When Dean lifted the remote to start the film they left on the main film page in a haze of hormones, nothing happened. They changed the batteries and still no reaction. The remote just had no will left to navigate menus. 

The last straw was his beloved laptop he just upgraded to the year before. That insufferably buggy tablet style computer was handed off to Cas who just borrowed whatever device wasn’t in use by the hunters beforehand. Not a single key marker was worn or clunky from overuse on the relatively new computer. With it closed under his arm, he passed by the room shared by the pair now. Their efforts to keep each other’s passion laden noises to a minimum were appreciated, but not nearly as thorough as Sam would have expected. His pace sped up as he passed their room, but he felt a painful zap on the center of his palm and he nearly dropped the laptop in surprise. Once at his desk, he opened the lid to find it was just as dead as the phone in the kitchen the week before. A pained mien beset him all at once calling back that same tertiary irritation. They were bricking his electronics with their co-authored attempts at Sam’s nightmare fuel. This was Sam’s punishment for getting in the middle. Well to be fair there wouldn’t be a “them” without his prodding, but was this any way to repay him? 

The morning they finished up in Raleigh he left for Rufus’s cabin to search for a workable solution. Maybe they could ward their room or cover the walls in some supernatural sound cancelling foam. Hell, he would even draft a portal to a pocket dimension to resolve this unorthodox haunting. With all their efforts to let go and finally be as open with each other as they wanted to be over the past few weeks, Sam would hate to tell them to knock it off while he was home or drive them to create some sort of sex dungeon on the lower levels – then he would have to think about how he couldn’t enter the lower levels when one or both of the weren’t in his sightline on an upper floor. There were too many logistics involved, too many opportunities for hurt feelings. Failure on the other hand meant an eye or earful of his brother and best friend boning. Magic-based soundproofing was much more practical.

The moment he stepped out of the vehicle onto the dusty cement slab to pump gas into the extra canister; he heard his phone notification go off several times in rapid succession. The canister patiently sat on the ground unfilled beside the pump while Sam anxiously dialed his voicemail. Dean sent a barrage of calls but left a single confounding message. 

“Evil cheerio?” Sam asked the middle distance past his phone. While Dean’s distrust of such a bland cereal was completely sound, how could Cas have disappeared? He tucked the phone away, finished pumping his fuel, and headed further into town where his reception was the clearest. Whatever Dean’s explanation was for what was happening at the bunker wouldn’t be helped by static.

===============

Almost two entire days after Cas went poof, Dean at long last heard back from his brother. Knowing he could pull every book about angels off of the library’s shelves and still not have enough to hide his coffee thermos behind, he gathered them onto the library table restlessly. Since they moved into the bunker, he gathered this identical handful of tomes before. When wayward angels or Nephilim wondered into a case or out of the bunker without explanation, he entertained the idea that the reason could be found between their bindings. The drier his eyes became running laps up and down their pages that yellowed with age, the more it affirmed as hunters they had more real life experience battling, badly negotiating, and dismantling the plans of Angelic dicks than had ever been put to paper. Sure the manuals gave more histories of individual angels Dean couldn’t rattle off, but he had in depth knowledge of what their unwavering values were and what they would resort to when cornered. He could have done without their staggering elitism at every occasion though. Even Gabriel never truly let up on that one note, when he was sane anyway. Halfway down page 86 of the third book in the pile his phone sounded off in the silent library. “’Bout fuckin’ time, Sammy.”

“Hey, my bad, Dean, I didn’t have reception until a few minutes ago. Have there been any developments?” He wrestled his gas station coffee cup into the cup holder beside him.

“If you count wearing a long ass oval into the library floor pacing as ‘progress’, then yes; we now have a track for you to run indoors. Great progress,” he scoffed. He knew it wasn’t Sam’s fault, but his nerves had no constructive exit strategy as usual.

Sam paused for a long moment. “You done?”

Dean waited for an equally long amount of time tracing the last four words on the page with his eyes to calm down his thoughts. “It’s Cas, Sam. How are we gonna rescue him if we don’t know where he is?”

“Has your ‘evil Cheerio’ moved at all? Sucked down anything not nailed down?”

Dean thought back to the first few hours keeping an eye on the mysterious space dimple. “Not an inch. If it can draw any furniture in, there are a few hideous pieces in the storage room I could toss at it... for science.”

He rolled his eyes at his brother. “Maybe don’t do that. I was just in town fueling up but I can be back in about a day. I just have to finish packing up the books and get a couple of hours sleep then I’ll be there. I’ll call you when I pass through Casper, alright?”

Dean tugged his bottom lip with his teeth distress only mildly abating. “He’s gotta be alright, Sammy. He has to be.”

“We’ll make sure of that. I’ll call you soon. Let me know if anything changes or you just need to hear someone’s voice aside from your own bouncing off those thick walls.”

“A’right. Get some rest. Can’t promise I won’t be bouncing off the ceiling by the time you get back.”

They exchanged farewells and prepped for the tireless exhaustive worrying of the next day.


	3. The Seven Stages of Crinkle Cut Fries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam returns to the bunker. The brothers get down to brass tacks.

The trip back home began under a fading orange sky. His imagination cycled through renderings of this evil entity that invaded in their refuge and pulled their friend in like a vindictive black hole over and over again. Did it exist entirely on a diet of angels? Did the amorous duo trigger its opening like their recent necking EMP’s bricked his electronics? His mediocre to-go veggie burger threatened to disintegrate onto his lap every time he turned a corner, wrenching him back to the task at hand. As darkness passed overhead and pulled its curtain over the horizon, he pushed the aged SUV closer to its unremarkable top speed. The baseless images his mind conjured always put Dean in peril, but in his experience clear sky possibilities never were their forte. Occasionally they were very, very lucky.

A dozen hours later, a greasy bag of burgers and fries nearly slipped out of his hand as he descended the stairs into the War room wobbly-kneed from road-worn exhaustion. Though his brother was nowhere to be seen, the smell of Rump Chutley’s burger’s would surely grab him out of the bowels of the bunker. Throwing caution to the wind, he left the bag on the illuminated map table choosing to put his duffle away and settle in before bracing for Hurricane Desperately Concerned Dean. By the time he changed out of his road clothes and returned to the library, he found Dean munching on unbagged fries. By the gaunt despair painted on his brother’s face, it was clear he had raced through shock and denial. This was gluttony and fear personified. Since the heart of the matter bore a hole as clear as day through his chest, whiskey would be the precursor to guilt and bargaining. There was no plan of attack so there was still an imminent threat he could chase down through the clear view at the bottom of a bottle. When there was an Angel involved, the solution was rarely as apparent as a crossroads demon. When Dean looked up from the pile of fries before him, he weakly smiled at his brother awkwardly. “Oh, it’s you. I thought I got a visit from the burger fairy.”

Sam snickered then eyed his brother with pronounced suspicion. “There’s no such thing as the burger fairy, Dean. If there was, you would have put their lure under my pillow whenever I made it through the night without wetting myself.”

“Well you won’t know until you jump that hurdle will you, Sammy?”

Sam rubbed his forehead and harrumphed. At least his sense of humor was in one piece.

“If there can be evil cheerio creatures that eat people, there has to be its opposite somewhere in the world, right? There’s gotta be a burger fairy. Now tell me you found something.” He looked a fries with less interest and searched for any way to be useful.

He dumped out a stack of musty smelling books with matching brown spines in front of his counterpart. “These were from Rufus’s stash at the cabin wrapped up in a canvas bag marked ‘for pawn’. Seeing as Rufus didn’t have the occasion to meet many angels, he didn’t see the need for the incomplete History of Arioch.”

His brother grabbed at the first book with near reverence in his stewed desperation. “What does a fallen Angel have to do with Cas pulling a very unexpected Houdini?”

Sam considered asking about the specifics of his mysterious disappearance, but Dean was not forthcoming on details. Something in his gut told him he didn’t want to pick the lint off of that particular sweater just yet. “Maybe nothing, but we’ve both read through the books we have on Angels a dozen times before. I don’t remember seeing anything close to people disappearing into specks of dust before – nothing we’ve hunted fits this MO anyway. There’s a whole bunch more books in the trunk you are free to look through, but none of the others mention Angels, so we should start with these.”

He leaned over the table and scanned the table of contents warily. “A’right. You go get some sleep and I’ll pick up the first shift. And uh, thanks for coming back so quick,” he ducked his head back into the pages and shoved a fistful of fries in his face before Sam could make it a moment.

===============

Unbeknownst to Dean, darkness descended over the bunker as he held a hunched vigil over the third dry volume of Arioch. Sam returned to the War room refreshed and flannel warmed. Dean hardly looked up from scribbling on his long yellow legal notepad. Failing to announce any progress, Sam wrenched his brother out of his mid-sentence scrawling. “You find anything?”

His green eyes hopped from the page, up to Sam, and back down again with a hollow grunt.

Not discerning any meaning from the noise, he saw how Dean’s mood had soured further during his post cross country drive snooze. In all likelihood, he hadn’t done himself the same favor. “Have you slept at all?”

A wide palm swiped over his face as if to wipe the sleep deprived expression clean. “Here and there. Words are starting to run into each other, anyways. Could have sworn I just read what configuration an angel’s junk had to be in to ‘seed a Nephilim’. Thought I was wrong at first, but there are detailed depictions. Very unsexy and wildly unhelpful. I guess I should catch some shut eye for a bit.”

Sam halted his brother from leaving with a half-raised hand. Dean plopped back into his chair overdramatically in response. “What is it, Sammy?”

“You were pretty light on the specifics about when Cas went missing. You said he imploded into a tiny hole in space, but what was he doing? Was he using his Grace?” he asked, but slowed the questioning as Dean squirmed in displeasure. “Were you guys doing a spell or…?”

“I would have mentioned if we were,” he muttered. “Come on, Sam. I don’t want to talk about it. More importantly, you don’t want to hear about it.”

“Okay, I get that the picture might be one I want to scrub from my brain, but maybe there was some inciting incident. To help you both, I need to know every factor. Walk me through the day up until the event.”

His hand ran over his face again but rested it firmly over his mouth.

He raised his eyebrows and leaned his folded arms on the table. “Feel free to be a vague as possible,” he acquiesced.

===============

Dean looked off towards the ancient computer cabinets that lined the room with a thin lipped scowl. Without having to look his brother in the face he flexed his jaw back and forth clearly tossing details of that night into bins marked ‘brother safe thoughts’ and ‘Cas Erotica’. There were far more jaw hinges left than right.

The coffee in Sam’s mug swirled clockwise in his hand for a couple of minutes before he cleared his throat in annoyed impatience. 

“Fine, but you asked for this. Don’t come crawling to me if you feel awkward about knowing stuff you shouldn’t.” He pointed a firm finger at him with a commanding tone. They both knew it was far more disturbing to say than to hear. These were supposed to be private moments. Until recently, Cas and Dean didn’t have many intimate moments he would have regarded as particularly sacrosanct. Every fleeting brush of the lips and casual caress between them evolved into a salve that made his life worth all the trial and loss they mucked through together. Finally instead of a hard fought attempt at a normal life pushed at another human that he tried to regard as meaningful, he had an unwavering mate. In the end, the others couldn’t fathom the life he lived enough to accept him for who he needed to be to fight back the edge of oblivion over and over. It wasn’t ever their faults he figured, so he gave up; found solace in his family and a swath of beds from coast to coast to make the lonely nights fewer and far between. It was worth the tribulation because it brought him closer to Cas after all. It only took a special kind of wayward creature to unite them. Instead of fighting back to back against a surrounding enemy, Dean had to let the angel in to capture the beast. That harrowing effort and the provoking lug sitting across from him at the table tag teamed them into dealing with the elephant in the car. He owed Sam more than he could ever give, so what were a few veiled tawdry details? 

“We returned from that case in Raleigh a couple hours before I got your text about that smell at Rufus’s old cabin. I didn’t tell Cas you would be out for a few days because I wanted to surprise him. Over the last couple of weeks, we’d been on case after case: first that Wendigo in Cody, then the vamp commune in Bellwood.”

“Yeah, then the angriest hippie ghost we’ve ever seen in Bartlett. What does…” he stopped talking when Dean gave him a cold stare. “Sorry, go on.”

“There are always monsters out there to catch and kill. After being stuck in the bunker for longer than usual during the raijyuu incident, we were all dealing with a bit of cabin fever. Now, I understand it must have been different for you after Cas and I… you know. You wanted to get out of town but hunting alone is hardly ever the best choice. You had me or Cas or both around and well we had you around.” 

At this point they both squirmed in their chairs a bit and Sam drank his coffee in small sips just to have something to do with his hands. “All you had to do was ask and I would have cleared out faster,” Sam offered in a small voice.

Dean waved his comment off in favor of getting past the explanation he didn’t want to give in the first place even faster. “Anyway, we had been on the road so long that all we wanted to do was be alone together. That last day in Raleigh though; Cas had something planned for me. He ran off to ‘attend to an urgent matter’ and after he returned he was so quiet. It lasted the whole ride back. I thought he was mad about something. Maybe I fucked it up already. I didn’t know. I waited him out while he thought you were coming home a few hours later; let him simmer until he just came out and said whatever was bugging him, you know? Turns out the surprise he had in store for me was a happy one. He nailed his grace down temporarily.”

His brow furrowed with concern. “Why would he do that?”

“Details you don’t want, Sammy. He took a small, very short term sabbatical from the… what did he call them… ‘reflexive’ properties of his grace. Like what his Grace automatically does to maintain his vessel, he wanted to halt it for a little bit,” Dean fought a gloating smirk, but failed for a moment. “Moving right along, the results of the ritual he performed were still in full effect when he started glowing, like when he shows his wings. Remember that piercing painful noise when he first tried talking to me I told you about? That pain came back and all I could do was block my ears. Eventually it stopped and he reached out to me. I held him up since he was so wobbly on his feet. Then in an instant he was just gone. That little donut in the air appeared right where he was standing by the couch.”

“Okay, no mind bleach needed there. Did his whole body disappear, or did he shrink, or did his clothes disappear with him?”

Dean winced and answered, “He wasn’t wearing… wait, no he grabbed some clothes up off the floor. Think he was wearing my shirt from the case, maybe my old jeans, too. They went with him wherever he is. Not a Honey-I-Shrunk-the-Cas situation, if I had to guess.”

“Why were your clothes on the floor?” Sam followed the thread of thought to a dissatisfactory conclusion. “Oh…. OH.”

“Don’t. That’s when I called you the first time.”

“You said he ran off the last day we were in Raleigh, right? Could this ritual he performed have had an adverse reaction on his grace?”

“Can you think of any other explanation?” he asked incredulously.

Sam tugged at his bottom lip then lit up. “Remember when we met Cas on top of the bunker to let the raijyuu out for Raijin to reclaim? Cas said he got a charge from the containers they were in. Maybe that compromised his power somehow.”

“Yeah, but that was weeks ago. You figure if there was a bad reaction there it would have happened lickety split, not waited weeks to manifest.”

“Not necessarily. When Cas took in those other angels’ grace it took time to turn sour,” he said happy with his counterpoint. After all it gave them something to go on.

Dean rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes in sleepless desperation. “I don’t know, Sammy. I just want him back.”

“I got this, Dean. You turn in and I’ll hit the books.”

===============

Sam looked at the clock on his phone’s screen four times in the past fifteen minutes. Counting backward from the time be walked back through the bunker door, it was clear Dean hadn’t gotten any recuperative sleep in those three days. While he wanted to let Dean sleep, he also knew he would get his ass chewed if he sat on the reason Cas’s Grace changed his channel and didn’t wake him. The decision weighed on him enough that he took up polishing the Olympic oval Dean wore into the library floor with his socked feet while he couldn’t get ahold of Sam those first agonizing forty-eight hours. Somewhere on a high thirties lap, Sam heard the coffee machine carafe clink back into its recess in the kitchen. His brother had slept for about twenty hours straight, but from the muttering he could hear on the way towards him, it wasn’t as restful as either one of them would have liked.

He rounded the corner into the kitchen to find Dean wrapped up in a wrinkled t-shirt he imagined Cas last wore to sleep and his free arm tucked around his stomach tightly in worry. The circles around his eyes were less pronounced, but his world still appeared to be collapsing in on itself. “Hey, Sammy,” he greeted limply.

“Hey, how’d you sleep?” He sat across from him at the table shoulders hunched over his lanky frame.

He rubbed his shoulder and shook his head in reply. “I don’t know if I slept at all, just blacked out.”

“Well, I found something, but I’m not sure what we can do about it.”

His back straightened up drastically. “Lay it on me Sammy. Can’t be worse than anything we’ve been through before.”

“I know, but still.” He flicked through the wrinkled notes folded between the pages of one of the familiar brown tomes Dean had already skimmed through. From his haggard tone, it sounded as if Sam could have been berating himself for missing a detail in the first place. “According to the Arioch’s fifth volume, whenever a particular angel felt despair, they left narcissus triandrus in their wake. When this angel felt the death of her Nephilim child, her sadness leeched so far into the earth that this patch of soil grew nothing but those specific plants for a century. The narcissus triandrus or ‘Angel Tears’ couldn’t be burned or tilled from the soil by human hands until that angel was thought to have moved on.”

Even though Dean listened intently, his pre-caffeinated patience remained thin. “You read about plants? How are your gardening tips gonna help locate Cas?”

“The lore says that divine beings’ wavelengths are subject to colliding energies. Those wavelengths have an effect on the universe around them. They remain intact by periodically recalibrating to counteract opposing stimuli like other types of energy. By having a disturbed wavelength that angel created matter to manifest its pain. Angels’ physiology adapts to new conditions faster than humans; like passing on advantageous genes between cycles of replacing cells, not through offspring. An angel’s grace will remake the vessel over weeks to accommodate for updated external factors; think increased bone density, oxygen saturation levels, vary metabolism rates. From what I gather, it’s not as fast as growing a third arm; more like unconscious mind over matter reconfiguration.”

“You think Cas’s Grace was ‘recalibrating’ after the raijyuu infusion?” he asked rotating the mug in his palms in contemplation.

“Yes. As for his new wavelength, Cas wasn’t in pain or loss though, Dean. He was in love. I think it means Cas may be rearranging his angelic DNA as of were for you.”

Dean’s entire body stilled and his eyes grew wide. “You think by limiting his Grace’s ability to update himself, he imploded?”

“It’s more like his body couldn’t metabolize the raijyuu’s power, realign itself for you, and maintain itself while he experienced such strong feelings at once – like a perfect storm of stress on the confines of his Grace. Does that make sense?”

“So this is my fault. I did this to Cas,” he said deflated as he drew inwards again.

“No, Dean, it’s not on you. Blaming yourself won’t do any good. I mean come on; you guys blew up my phone and laptop while you were macking on each other. You can’t say his mojo was in perfect sync.”

He folded his arms over the edge of the table. “I just assumed it was our sparks, but Cas did seem more suspicious of the electromagnetic interference. That had to be his ‘Grace fluctuations’, right? He never made it seem like a big deal, never acted like it put him in any pain, though. You think he could have been hiding it from us?”

“We can ask him when he comes back. And he will come back. The Arioch says that when their wavelengths achieve balance again, their Grace solidifies to its version of normal.”

“But that one angel wasn’t normal for one hundred years right? We’ll be long gone by then.”

Sam smirked. “You think the first thing Cas does when he gets his power back is not gonna be to track you down and break all my electronics?”

The frown on Dean’s lips shattered into a cautious smile. “You think?”


	4. It's the Sudden Stop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel falls again. Reality starts to sink in.

Piercing through the atmosphere faster than his wings could control, his imminent earthbound collision reminded him of how he fell to earth years before. Most of the angels who were volleyed to the fertile ground below were too stunned at their predicament to push, grab or pull at the wind gusts around them to slow their plummet. By then Cas was too accustomed to the petrifying cold of streaming air currents to let himself be cast down indiscriminately. With his Grace hobbled, he felt the paralyzing chill of the wind against his skin, the adrenaline pumping frigid fear through his every vein. This time though, he knew what it meant to fall, what he would have left and what he would go without. The only question that struck him as he tumbled was how long it would take to get back to the bunker. Would he end up stuck states away again without a penny to his name? 

A light gray cityscape pulled closer and closer. The harsh realization he wasn’t in Kansas anymore seeped into every pore. An expansive city crisscrossed with highways and parks and skyscrapers scattered about reined him in. His fingers and toes were numbed and windburned well before he found the strength to thrust his body further away from the buildings, pray he didn’t squash a living being with the force of his reentry. The blood pulled in the back of his head, threatening to rip consciousness away. 

All at once, the ground yanked at his bones nearly enclosing him into its violent embrace. With hampered power, all the Grace he could muster to dampen his fall jerked him back like a ragdoll between savage jaws in time to spit globs of earth up into the sky around him. The air ejected from his lungs as he landed shoulder first against his cushion of scrapped together dregs of Grace. Every iota of it expired around him, forcing even more dirt and muck up into the swirling air overhead. This mire laden open hole in the ground reorganized the dark dirty matter to fall away from him like an art installation dreamt up by an avant-garde mysophobe. With as much effort was put into it, whatever entity flung him so fast and so far should have appreciated the detail work, he scoffed to himself morosely. After the grand expenditure of his Grace, it took all the energy he had to calm his breathing and search aloft for an open portal in wide blue sky. Fluffy white clouds passed by lazily, masking any indication that an angel had fallen across its path. 

Although it was startling, it wasn’t Cas’s first time descending from amongst the stars. In the vein of every other harsh landing, he would find his bearings, assess the damage, and make his way back to familiar surroundings. If he was lucky, and he was hardly ever lucky, he could hitch a ride back to Kansas without worrying Sam and Dean too much. With calm even breaths, the adrenaline filtered out and nauseating pain replaced it in every one of his nerve endings. He counted three, four, six broken ribs and several fractures. His jaw worked its way around in a circle without issue so he would have no problem talking to the brothers if someone would lend him a phone. Unnerving pops and cracks scored the background music of his journey to the more or less upright standing position. Every moment that passed brought more aches and pains to light, dulling his vision the taller his stood.

Footfalls sounded rapidly towards his position. He didn’t anticipate having to fight this soon after his pummeling defeat versus Newton’s pet project. Nestling at the bottom of the barrel of his power were droplets of the foreign essence he absorbed weeks before. Since he couldn’t call upon his Grace he leaned into this familiar power, drew it into his center to intimidate his enemy, possibly saving his hide. Posturing divine vibrato would be his best play after his best imitation of a comet across the early evening skyline brought unwanted attention.

His eyes strained against the field a few feet above him where the rigid outline of a man firmly shouted at him. The voice he knew in his bones, but the words cramped in on each other in hollering octaves. Deciphering it felt like he was trying to taste Latin. Grim confusion gripped him the more he was shouted at. Gradually this man’s tone calmed and Cas’s vision clarified. This man had a clear shot directly at his head. Past the still barrel of his gun arched the arms of a sternly defensive green eyed man. His strong jaw uttered concerned words one after the other in his direction as he ducked into the grassy mutilated knoll and withdrew his gun back into his jacket. With his final step forward his vexed but assertive face snapped into focus. Wait… 

‘Dean?’ he opened his mouth to ask, but no sound rattled past of his vocal chords. Panic shook him wholly sending a shock wave of agony throughout his suddenly fragile form. Clicks of his tongue and strong deep vowels puffed out from the strange copy’s lips but lost their unwavering order when his knee bowed almost sending him crashing to the ground. 

The copy caught him, propped him up by the side with a tight grip, hoisting him to rest on a cold gray bench a few feet away from the pit. Ragged breaths clawed back up his throat as the man knelt in front of him and pulled his shirt closed. The dusky moor irises inches from his dipped from the buttons his nimble fingers popped back through button holes and his face. There was no recognition there, not a single thread to tie them back together. Though there was pain echoing through his bones, satisfaction reigned around his crown knowing even a pale comparison of his Dean would have the kindness within him to help a stranger in such a state. Immediately after buttoning the last button, the copy shed his jacket and draped it over his shoulders, the warmth of compassion nearly searing the arctic grip on his skin away. He left him to hunch in on himself shivering in the cold wind while he made a phone call a few paces away. Cas gripped at the collar of his jacket and inhaled deeply. His olfactory senses sent no molecular information to his mind. His Grace must have been all but gone. The smell of redwood and sweat permeated the navy fabric of the coat. There was also sweet musky cologne he had never smelled before on the coat, but it was faded, like it had been applied the day before. While the high notes of Dean were there, the low notes were disturbingly absent.

The green eyed man approached him again and gathered him back up against his side. The almost cooed direction he understood was a call for cooperation in walking further towards the tall grey buildings in the distance. His hushed tones soothed him despite the unpleasant vibrations of walking on unfamiliar concrete. Those green eyes hardly ever left his on their walk a few blocks to an unassuming grey sedan. Surprise didn’t register on his face when the copy opened the passenger side door to let him in, but the sedan was no well-maintained Impala.

The man guided his head into the car carefully and buckled his seatbelt for him before closing the door. Castiel caught these new green eyes fishing into his shirt and up his face while they remained close, not entirely sure what to think. They pulled back onto the busy city street then briefly onto an elevated highway. The highway arched up over the city putting the skyscrapers and many large historic buildings on display around them. His eyes shambled from landmark to landmark trying to compare them to sights he knew, but he drew a blank. The tall billboards with five foot high bubble letters scrawled across their center conjured no meaning. The sun ducked back behind the skyline as they exited the highway down onto street level. A few more turns brought them to a seven story large building with rows and rows of windows with the curtains pulled closed. 

The man parked a few rows from the front entrance and guided Castiel just as carefully out of the car and towards the beige building. Several people passed him in simple tunics wrapped in fall coats, some even in wheelchairs. Castiel stopped mid stride and nearly tripped Dean’s copy. Sure he was banged up, cracked and splintered, but was this safe? If they found out what he was, wouldn’t they lock him up? He wouldn’t be able to get back to his Dean; in all likelihood he wouldn’t even be able to return to this bright eyed imitation that shared no memories with him, didn’t love him, didn’t care… 

Where in the world had he landed? In all of the commotion of mass dirt displacement and high wire highway gazing, he hadn’t taken the opportunity to truly panic until that moment. The green eyed man stood beside him and waited patiently, issuing calm utterances and reassuring platitudes he couldn’t understand. Castiel looked from the copy to the building and back, knowing he couldn’t escape easily in his condition. Where would he even go? Why would he want to be away from the one person he might have a connection to? The experimental ritual left him with rich sensory perception and one other important tool: stronger gut instinct. While he couldn’t figure out where or when he was, his gut told him to trust this Dean. When he was ready to move again, the copy helped him limp forward with a tired smile, never pushing him before he was ready. Maybe this copy was this universe’s way of helping him back to the original faster. 

===============

In hindsight, trusting his gut had been a huge mistake. Moments after the copy relinquished him to handsy healthcare workers, he was disrobed, bent into painful positions, and drained of several fluids making a headache pulsate stronger. The relentless prodding halted briefly by the time they relocated him to a room with a solitary bed, a thin open wardrobe, and a dim lamp wedged in the corner. When he sat down a severe looking red headed doctor walked into the room and spoke to him with exaggerated mouth movements. The day had worn down his body like an over-sharpened pencil, breaking off every piece of sharp attention he conjured as soon as he summoned it. With a mid-Kegel cramped expression, she eventually moved onto a form of sign language he can’t decipher either so he stared at her blankly. Markedly more irritated by him, she scribbled some notes down on his chart and slapped it back into the arms of a nurse standing nearby. Her low ponytail whipped behind her as he barked a couple of orders and exited the room tailed by two nurses wordlessly annoyed as well. Was everyone in this universe so vocal?

Universe, Cas thought again. The possibility he landed in a different part of the world with a clone of Dean in it was unrealistically low. The gravity of the realization settled over him like a dense comforter of dispossession. Shoulders slumped as he climbed all the way under the thin waffle woven covers of the metal hospital bed. With the pillow half under his head and half in his arms, be rolled away from the light casting around the door left ajar. His even breaths warmed his cheek against the pillow. His creaking joints silenced over a few exhales imagining the pillow in his arms was Dean’s usually hot slumber smell soaked backside. Perhaps this was one of those brief travels though time and space. Perhaps he would wake up curled against temporary tattooed skin and pick up where they left off. Perhaps it was the smell of the bunker invading his nose instead of the antiseptic chemical tang against the back of his throat. Any way he cut it, without Grace to dull his senses, he would dream of home.

===============

The first day at St. Lucia dragged on, irritation settling under his skin like the constant but surprising vibration of a drummer living a floor below. Nurses invaded his bubble, asked him questions he didn’t understand, and then left with annoying regularity. Not seeing the copy since he was dropped off unnerved him further. Was fate in this universe as cruel as in his? Would she dangle the closest proximity to the closest friend he could think of in front of his nose, then never allow him to reappear? 

Three meals passed without his appetite picking up the slack of his absent grace. Usually without it to sustain him, he would be ravenous the first few days. A stubborn malaise trapped him inside his damaged body so tightly he hardly stood up with the help of the nurses to empty his bladder, the most trying taskmaster of the body in his opinion. The doctor became stern with his lack of appetite, threatening to force a feeding tube into him, he guessed from her crude hand gestures, when a sight for sore eyes shuffled into the room: the taller Winchester.

If Cas sported a less mangled frame, he would have leapt from the bed knowing full well it wasn’t his Sam. If Dean had Sam in this universe, then this couldn’t have been the worst of all universes. Fate wasn’t a full on asshole, apparently. The doctor left the room defeated again, but the nurses brought him a small bowl of jello and encouraged him to eat the bare minimum criteria of what constituted as food. Cas poked at it with his spork while the lanky Winchester introduced himself again. 

The first time he walked in, Castiel was between sleep cycles and hardly acknowledged that someone cast shadows on his sleep anemic form. All he could manage was a grunt and nod so Sam unpacked a laptop and asked him a series of questions be assumed were written on some sort of prepared generic witness inquiry form on his screen. Just elated to see a copy of Sam, he choked down his eight cube gelatin feast one cube at a time. The chunks dissolved in his throat in an uncomfortable way, as if he purposely swallowed bricks at some point since the fall. On the last question, his ears perked at the word “immunity” and a blob of jello bounced off his lips and onto the tray. 

The agent’s eyes caught his over the edge of the screen and he asked the question a second time excitedly. Still, he could only recognize the same word. With the many languages he learned from humans over the millennia, it boggled his mind that not one word of this new tongue rang a bell until now. The agent shook his head and closed the computer as if to suss out any meaning from his momentary reaction. 

Some element in his contemplative scowl rubbed Cas the wrong way. Was this Sam even good influence on this universe’s Dean? He sat back and let the agent scrutinize his bruises in technicolor and mind like digital snow from the chair a few feet away. Uncomfortable silence washed over them. While Cas exercised his discomfort by tugging at the well pressed collar seam of the copy’s navy jacket, Sam fiddled with the spot on his shirt that laid over a pendant of some sort. It wasn’t hard for Cas to imagine this mimic of Sam would find solace in some variation of iconography, family heirloom, or religious symbol. After all, upon their first meeting, the Sam he knew treated him with bubbling reverent enthusiasm. It didn’t take very long to dash his ideals of what an angel did in their service of Heaven, that Heaven anyway. 

Before long Sam chirped on in deep tones, propelling ideas at him to see if any caused a reaction. He didn’t use the word he knew again, but several syllables echoed about his mind. Castiel sought them out and paid his every word rapt attention. Maybe his brain was damaged in the fall as well. Fear struck him contemplating how without his grace he could become less useful to his family if it remained permanent.

His words layered upon each other like orchards of overgrown fruit, piling into a mass that fatigued him to bear. He slumped back onto the bed and his eyes started to drift. Inhales and exhales smoothed out, but the agent a few feet from him persisted in lulling him to sleep with more grandiloquence. His eyelids almost met when he heard the agent stand and walk towards the bed. He said something softer, and then his fingers darted out towards him without warning. 

Cas’s eyes flew open and he grabbed the hand at his shirt and twisted the wrist backward. Sam called out in surprise and fought to pull his hand back. The force of his grip wasn’t enough to break any bones, but he very well might have if he still possessed his Grace. 

Sam’s eyes grew wide and he spat three quick phrases he took to mean he conceded. Castiel loosened his grip immediately and crossed his arms over his chest, pinning the jacket closely to him. Sam inspected his bruising arm in shock, but found no real damage. His eyes flitted up to Castiel’s cold mien and down to the jacket in wonder. His feet brought him back to his visitor’s chair and he returned to typing away at the keys of his laptop almost sheepishly. Although his eyes dodged and parred the insistent gazing, treating his screen as a deflecting shield, Castiel knew he wasn’t done with the interrogation. For now though, sleep was moments from overwhelming him. His eyelids fluttered closed and he dropped into dreams without any hesitation.

===============

Sunlight warmed his face out of a much needed restful nap a couple of hours later. His fractured bones felt too inert and although he knew stretching would hazard more pain than it was worth, he played the odds. His left arm reached out into the sunlight, warmth gathering some dewy sweat on his palm. He pulled his right arm up but was stopped inches from where it started and kept from seeking the relief of a good stretch. That asshat copy of Sam had handcuffed him to the bed. The cuff’s rattling against the plastic molded rail drew Sam’s self-satisfied smirk from behind his screen. Castiel ran his tongue over his top teeth unamused. Sam all but ignored him and spouted off some configuration of words that included a new word: resist. Although he was irked at his new wholly unnecessary restraints, he was encouraged by his new two word vocabulary. As the afternoon passed, he listened more intently to the nurses passing by his open door for more words and concepts he could cobble together into more usable language. The agent’s unabashed mistrust of him forced him to take phone calls right in front of his charge, not bothering to care if he knew how ticked he remained over his previous overstep.

Come afternoon, the rain hurled itself into the window of his overtly beige hospital room lulling him into intermittent naps over the next couple of days. Between brief visits from the copy while he napped and a sadistically prompt nurse with dark hair that checked his vitals every couple of hours, he was spending more and more time alone watching a small TV installed in the corner of his room near the ceiling. The taller agent dedicated less time on the chair near his bedside and more time in the hallway on phone calls or in the lounge down the hall. There were only so many times he could fruitlessly press him for answers to questions he couldn’t understand. New words came to him faster with every hour. By the time the weekend reared its lonely ugly head, watching the four channels the hospital tv had to offer lost its novelty and he yearned for his language skills to propagate faster so he could read a magazine, a newspaper, even a STI pamphlet, anything. Operating on the assumption that his attentive eavesdropping was accelerating his learning, he estimated it wouldn’t be long before he comprehended most non-technical words that fell from the Winchesters’ lips. Planting his satchel beside his bedside throne of misery, the taller agent sighed heavily. His exhausted posture led Cas to believe banging his head metaphorically up against the wall of Cas’s lack of verbal communication led to some impressive swelling.

“Do we need to go over the questionnaire again today or can we just skip the formalities? You tell me you are just an innocent experimental aircraft fighter pilot and we send you back to some country past the iron curtain. How does that sound?” Flat toned annoyance peppered the air around him. His eyes fixed on the coat still wrapped around his shoulders like he was staring at the wrong skin on the wrong body.

He smirked, knowing what he didn’t understand just further demonstrated the agent’s annoyance versus being pivotal to proving a point.

He leaned forward with his elbows resting his knees. “While Dean thinks you floated down from the sky like some creature that fell from Heaven, I know the explanation couldn’t be that fanciful. No offense, Mr. Doe, but you’re not a case no matter how much Dean wants you to be.”

If he knew the sentiment would be understood, he could have given him a thumbs up and solved the mystery for him, but it wouldn’t be exactly right. It wouldn’t amount to the hard won truth they both deserved.

“If you could just open your mouth and let the words fall, we could all get out of this damned hospital. God knows Dean doesn’t want to be in a hospital any more than I do after that god forsaken raid.” He stared out the rain battered window lost in thought.

He tilted his head, giving Sam his full focus. 

“A couple of weeks ago, our team caught up to these really bad people, some misguided militia types that believed the government was in cahoots with aliens to whisk a select few humans off world when we poison our planet past the point of recovering. CO2 in the atmosphere, communication towers giving everyone cancer, the end of Nascar racing, whatever the reason - it didn’t really matter – they were just small people afraid of giving up the power they never had the first place. 

“They did atrocious, horrible things to the families of their opposition: killed, maimed, assaulted, and disfigured them to send a message of absolute ironclad power. Their disconnected cell organization structure ensured we couldn’t track down a leader, only figments, maybe a regional figurehead or two. We tracked them… no, Dean tracked them down by tracing a missing arms shipment the bastards didn’t know had location tracking tags on it. The team monitored their compound, had an inside man, but we didn’t know enough about the interior to ensure a safe-as-possible incursion. When the smoke cleared, we could count our downed brethren on one hand. The family members of their perceived enemies already irrevocably harmed was another matter. Some of us rushed in to aid in their escape were stopped dead in our tracks at the sight of them. So many of them had to be carried out on stretchers. They were forced to work past exhaustion, without food, or water. Some of them were even kids. The youngest we saw was no taller than my hip. While it felt good to know we helped free them, there’s no way any of us there slept the next week, rested our heads without seeing the damage done to those people on the backsides of our eyelids. Some of us took it worse than others, plagued with thoughts like ‘If I had only gotten there sooner’ or ‘If I had connected this bit of evidence with this person of interest a day earlier how may more could I have saved?’”

His far off gaze scrambled off of his face with the tussle of his locks. The congested pain was plain to see hovering around him. His downcast stare attempted to pull the pain inward again, but something told Cas this Sam wasn’t good at shoving it down either.

“Just… we need a solid win, not a wild goose chase,” he pleaded. Nervous frowns twitched out his hopelessness in mores code.

Cas’s heart sank listening to the agent. In no universe could the Winchester escape front row seats to the tragedy and the depravity of their fellow man. Finding any silver lining felt like a heartless self-soothing measure. While he wished he could speak back to them, he only had the motor skills at his disposal, so he tried to comfort Sam the best he could. His free hand found the agent’s outstretched hand hanging off of his knee at the bound angel. Sam pulled back a fraction at first, a telling vulnerability playing off of his brow. When Cas didn’t retract his hand and gave him a considered smile, Sam returned the smile meekly. “Thanks, I guess.”

The wordless cloud between them thinned out as they separated. Sam reclaimed his laptop from his bag, pulled up the tiresome questionnaire, and started his questions anew. “What’s your name?”


	5. Ketch and Release

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ketch and Cas's first meeting.

After catching words in the air with his ears, he didn’t expect the first word he could read to be a name: Meg. The dark eyed woman bore a passing resemblance to the Meg he knew, but didn’t carry herself with the imposing mien of a demon with enough power in her pinky to crush a hamstrung angel into the linoleum flooring. His Meg was kind in her calculating protection while he was burdened with a piercingly obnoxious archangel near the end of their friendship. Still a blatantly sadistic habit of checking his vitals and turning down the pain killers in his IV showed she still took at least a modicum delight in the power she wielded. He couldn’t really begrudge her though. In this world without divine or demonic power, the scales were less inclined to erratic swings in either direction. Her short fingers pulled her hair back behind her ear as she scribbled some numerical values down. He smiled at her attentive measures, but she grimaced at his close proximity. “Whoa there, buddy.”

He sat back obediently and turned his eyes to the clock. The taller agent had been gone for a couple of hours, which wasn’t all that rare anymore but the visits from Dean’s copy were becoming shorter and further between. His circumstances were always precarious in this universe, but without this version of Dean and no Grace, his options were grim. If by some stroke of luck he regained his Grace and someone dangerous knew, his prospects were even grimmer. Loud voices outside of his door caught his attention, but the author of such an angry tirade was too far past the door for him to see. Even the grimacing nurse made her final notes and pidgeoned her head around the open door to find the culprit. Her intuition won out by blocking her face from the man’s view with her clipboard and speed walking in the other direction. 

A black haired man stomped towards her then parried into his hospital room, dissecting him with his meticulous gaze. This steel-toed demeanor barreled on as he ripped the patient file off of the wall and took turns reading the file and pinning Cas down in his hospital bed with a frown.

The injured man sat calmly with his hands folded over the green coat on his lap. Villains’ plans were never that complicated if it didn’t involve magic. This one was seething doing his version of pacing the room by reading the same part of the page over and over. He just had to wait and watch. It bothered this new imposing version of a face he knew that Cas didn’t squirm.

“You have one chance,” he declared as he put the file back. Lording his tall frame over the edge of the bed in an effort to emotionally overpower him, he proposed a draw of sorts, “I call the nice doctor over here and you tell her, write to her, mime to her – I don’t care – that you are a foreign agent. She locks you up for a short time and we extract you to your home country of choice. Pick one. I hear the Germany is quite picturesque in the autumn. If you keep up this charade, I tell her you attacked me; that you’re too dangerous to let mingle with the civilian population. I’ll let you imagine where you’ll end up.”

One of the many advantages of a well-positioned opponent staring you down is that they aren’t paying attention to the world at their sides or at their flank. If you can keep them distracted and have synchronized allies, you could out maneuver an enemy many times your size depending on what weapons you have at your disposal. Cas had no allies in this war of one sided words and no slingshot or stones. 

The low humble of a familiar voice echoed hushed responses in the hallway. Various footfalls rang out but they all slushed into the oppressive agent’s ears just the same. Cas on the other hand was listening. The slick slap of flat soled loafers skated softly behind the cracked door. Familiar eyes darted through the door’s small observation window. Just as quickly as they identified both people in the room he nodded to Cas and dashed off again. Maybe he wasn’t alone after all.

Cas crossed his arms over his chest, gripping the jacket closer to him and turned his attention to the door’s window again. The agent took it as a cue that he would try to run. 

“There’s no way you are getting out of here,” he growled. He looked disgusted at the jacket in the mute’s grasp. “Where did you get that jacket? Did you steal it from him?”

He huffed defiantly and ignored him, which in hindsight was a mistake. All at once the agent approached the bed and gripped the corner of the garment with both hands. Cas struggled to pull it back, but his muscles were weak from disuse and the cuff scrapped against his trapped wrist. A bout of tug of war proved fruitless, so Ketch reached out to grab the collar closer to the struggling man and missed. Frustration tore across his colored cheeks and he punched the bound man across the jaw more to shock him into releasing his grasp than to cause much damage. His calculation was successful in forcing Cas to let go with one hand, which gave Cas a chance to land a punch of his own. The jacket tore loudly out of his grip. The agent balled it up and tossed it across the room just to prove he could take any creature comfort away from the man when he willed it so.

“You had your chance,” he huffed and palmed his cheek to check for imminent swelling. “What a waste of time you’ve been.”

The agent stamped out of the room and down the corridor.

His eyes darted to the jacket in the corner, already missing the calming texture of its presence. The lamplight shone over it, exposing the only thing that mattered in that moment. He may not have his home, his family, or his Dean, but there was a magnificent imitation out there. Finding him was his all-consuming task. No matter how battered and bruised, he would find a way to support him and this Sam if they would allow him. Right then with Sam scrabbling in the hallway calling for Dean to swoop in, it appeared the reverse was just as true. When the copy appeared to whisk him away all cloak and dagger, guiding him through the maze of the hospital with a careful diligence, it was hardly believable that the pair would risk so much for him after knowing him for such short a time. They didn’t even really know him and he lacked the ability to explain. If any trace of his Grace as left, he would use it to find a way; make all of the trust placed in him a worthy investment.


	6. Dance Anthem of The 80's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas metaphorically gazes into the agent's navel.

Intermittent napping on the soft, amply stuffed couch began to bore him by mid-afternoon. The plush blanket wrapped around him smelled of Dean in several spots, reminding him that his version back at the bunker most likely going out of his gourd with worry. Not that their other worldly escapades occurred often, but it wouldn’t be the first or last time any one of them would be flung into the ether for an unknown chunk of time. Who knows, maybe time worked differently here. Hopefully when he returned it would be mere seconds from when he shrunk into sub compact existence in front of his eyes. Cas snuggled into the soft folds again and breathed in deeply. All he could do was hope. If there was no Grace, then there was most likely no proactive God to pray to either here. Muscle aches mingled with spiritual displeasure in his abdomen. Reaching up to Heaven or listening for Angel radio felt as useless as his irritatingly frequent urinations. Most parts of the human experience he could have done without; that being his least favorite. Bottling up that ache forced him from the dark couch to investigate the other rooms in the suburban home. His mission to prove useful could very well start with something in one of those rooms. 

The laundry room was properly stocked and the machines were empty. This Dean clearly was more diligent about laundry than his. The second he stepped foot in the bunker, laundry was practically his primary function after hunting and apocalypse derailment. The kitchen was similarly vacant, but the sink and surfaces could use a scrubbing. Various earmarked menus near a pile of accumulating mail proved that takeout was likely the majority of his sustenance. At least some things remained the same. The living room was pristine outside of the small nest he cobbled together in the exact center of the living room. He suspected it was due to the agent spending so little time at home or simply didn’t have obvious hobbies outside of reading. Three bookshelves lined the wall opposite of the TV, but as Cas was still not exactly literate, it was hard to pinpoint the subject matter from their spines. All that remained inside the small suburban home was the sparse adorned bedroom.

Cas took the same liberties with this Dean’s property as he would any other’s. Tactile curiosity was permissible otherwise he wouldn’t have formed as strong of a bond with humanity. During his millennia amongst them he learned from them hands on. What objects were out in the open? What facets of their personality were on display? What secret materials were squirreled away in a box under the bed or between mattresses and box springs? He found nothing wedged between the unmade layers of bedding, but just out of sight, he spied the corner of shiny bound paper on the floor under the bedside table. Magazines filled with pinups in scant costuming or nude with eyes locked on the viewer were printed on every page. There was nothing demure about the models or voyeuristic about the photos. They knew they were being gawked at, eaten up with lust filled eyes. That powerful domination must have been alluring for the agent. His hot urges being secondary to what the model and photographer allowed him to see ticked some of the same boxes as his Dean’s. But would his Dean have ever been as open about his attraction to the male form? Busty Asian Beauties, the bible of his adolescent sexual longing, littered the bottom of his duffle bags and bookshelves of his room in the bunker, but a taut mountain of a man had never graced the cover of his skin mags. Did he still feel shame over his natural proclivities? 

Cas rummaged around further in the bedside table drawers closest to the side he slept on, itching to see if its contents varied that drastically from the Kleenex, lube, and useful odds and ends neatly organized in his Dean’s bedside drawer. The contents of this mahogany bedside table told a different story indeed. Two dildos, one unopened, a small vibrator, and a clear anal fleshlight stood proudly while mixed in with two different types of lube in the tall top drawer. Cas absently wondered what configurations he might enjoy them in, but was certain not to touch them. After all it would be unhygienic for future use. If his Dean had similar items, it wouldn’t be crossing a boundary to explore their heft and textures with his own hands. His willingness to use them together may have been another story this early into their sexual relationship. It made him consider if his Dean would be this comfortable in his identity if he fully accepted himself or his family had accepted his sexuality from a young age. The Winchesters’ father would have peeled Dean’s backside if he knew or even blamed it on witchcraft if he could thread that particular bigoted needle. Bobby though, he ultimately wouldn’t have cared as long as he was safe, he imagined. A sad smile slid across his face remembering Bobby’s brand of bristly paternal love for all of them.

A consternating yawn fell from his lips as he turned his attention to the closet doors left askew. Blue eyes crawled over boring suits hanging from wooden rails, through neatly folded shirts, to drawers full of haphazardly paired socks and various undergarments. He closed them to discover two milk crates at the top of the closet. Never one to pass over a piece to the Winchester shaped puzzle, he dragged the boxes down and drug them into the living room where he could spread their contents on the light carpeting. One black crate contained a catalog of records bearing varying levels of damage on their sleeves’ corners. Some records were clearly older and played with more regularity than others. The grey box held a record player shoved in at an angle, the bulk of it jutting out of its container.

Looking through music stash, he was flabbergasted that this copy wasn’t head over heads for classic rock like his Dean. No Zepplin or Jefferson Airplane or Ozzy would appear despite how many times he flipped between the cardboard sleeves. He flipped the record covers over and wondered if this Dean liked the B-sides of records better than the A-sides. The grayscale cover of a blues album pulled him back one of their first car trips back to the bunker.

“Classics are on the A-side for a reason,” he stated plainly, not bothering to drag his eyes from the dusk lit highway laying their straight course out into the far distance. “Some sappy acoustic version of a band’s greatest hit never got a crowd roaring or a record label’s attention. They all pale in comparison.” 

“You made a big deal out of that acoustic cover that older country balladeer performed of that nihilist rock band’s song, Dean.”

“Yeah that was like once…” he flitted his eyes over to Cas and pouted.

“Then there was that time we were driving past Kansas City that you almost cried when you heard…”

“One, I did not cry…” He shot a finger up into the air and allowed his scrunched glare to rest on the angel for a couple of beats.

“Your olfactory glands were actively producing…” he reported before being cut off by the louder argument.

“TWO, I just had Diablo Tacos,” he paired his upheld finger with another one loosely and continued. “Can’t blame a man for being affected by hi-octane spice, Cas.”

“Whatever, Dean,” he digressed. Letting him have this one would be less burdensome than coping with his bruised machismo the rest of the ride home.

He brought the aging record cover to his nose and smelled the dusty pine on it, like it had sat in a large wooden chest before being relegated to the plastic crate. It seemed like a hasty moving decision grouping this old tech into such small confines then up into the hatbox space of a closet. The agent proved to be pragmatic as well as exceptionally dedicated to his job. The most efficient method of listening to music wasn’t a bulky record player dragged from a hiding space, so why keep it at all? Cas claimed the large headphones below the box sets in the entertainment center and plugged them into the record player with an adapter. Well, he thought, might as well start from the top of the pile. 

Within a few minutes, he slipped off the couch and onto the floor beside the device transfixed by the popping mellow tones of high energy crooners and lax rockers. Sitting with his back arched against the side of the couch in such a cramped position made his arms and legs lightly spasm with stabbing aches. He gathered the pillow and blanket and moved his small nest off of the couch. Side A’s riled him up and Side B’s calmed him down over and over. The cycle wore at the elasticity of his heart, imagining the songs about his Dean, but putting new songs into his mouth felt strange. In all the times Dean sang softly to him as they drove Baby over state lines, recently holding hands on more tender tracks, he had felt similar sentiments washing over him from Dean’s dulcet lamentations. These word configurations were new, so they seemed more fitting to fall from the agent’s lips. His mind floated to this more comforting formulation. The rough landing hadn’t blinded him as it had muted him. The way the agent diligently studied his face parsed any uneasiness about his surroundings into manageable pieces. These dithering stares flashed glimpses of the bare want he felt for him. Part of him knew fate drew them together no matter what universe they were in. The evidence of it blared in this world. After all he was sent barreling towards him out of all the places and people he could have been thrown at. How much of his compulsion for the agent was fate and how much was his misdirected love for his version of the man? A spiral of doubt crawled around his tender guts. The B-sides pulled at that tether like a finger guiding a kite string. On the third album he began listening to the B-sides first, knowing he could get a cohesive feel for each artist on the A-side. However, it became apparent the textured underbelly of their truths gathered on the bottom side. Eventually, the headphones lay on the carpet flanking the player unplugged. The deep tones of the singer’s lyrical barrages bounced off the walls and gathered in the crannies of the shelves where bookmarks delineated one thought from another. He imagined being surrounded in the center of a small brick walled venue like the one Dean took him to on their last solo trip out. He closed his eyes and could feel a green eyed man’s hand find his in the dimly lit club. A part of him didn’t want to open them again, because in that moment, he didn’t have to choose which Dean he wanted to be there when they opened. He held them both.

His stomach churned and folded over on itself about halfway through the pile. The clock on the face of the borrowed phone told him it was late afternoon, which was about the time he fell headlong into his third nap of the day slumped on the carpet. Letting his Graceless form dictate his action fecklessly, he turned the volume down on the player and his head lolled to the side. Within three bridges of a long dead balladeer’s opus, he was out.

=============== 

A tickle of cologne and rain stirred him from his nap. Stubbornly languid, he rested his eyes until a hand shook him lightly. He blinked a couple of times, wetting his dry eyes as he took in his surroundings. No part of the bunker he could remember had carpeting. A staggered yawn pulled from his lungs as Dean hovered over his shoulder with a smile that felt like salve on his wounds. Reaching out and pulling him into a good after-nap kiss crossed his mind. As his hands reached up to drag him in, he noticed he was wearing an unfamiliar suit jacket and drew his arms back. Wait this wasn’t his Dean, he realized. An instant later, the feeling of holding his hand in the dark cascaded down his chest and he wasn’t startled anymore. A sheepish happiness took residence in his torso, though he chastised himself for feeling it so quickly. They shared their thoughts about the music as well as they could and Dean practically threw him in the bathroom. Did he smell that bad? The nurses must have been saints in disguise if his human-esque form smelled that unpleasant after 24 hours without cleaning.

As he showered, the agent spoke of this world’s Benny with reverence and respect. This Benny seemed just as ravenous, but instead of human blood, he hungered for justice. What a pure sentiment for a twisted and depraved thing as a vampire, he thought. Still yet another person they knew gave this Dean companionship, and for that he was grateful.

Climbing out of the shower, he felt substantially better than he had beforehand; more limber and awake than he had in days. Outside of the oppressive and offensively sanitized smelling hospital, his lungs filled to the brim. These new experiences of music, food, life, and entertainment options fueled his mind to churn through this new world with a refreshed perspective. Hope enveloped him, knowing it would be simple matter of time and effort to start communicating and comprehending this life and the people around him as well as he would his own. Time as he knew it was now limited, but his second fall struck the gong of a new chance at a different life. The nature of his vessel was still a conundrum to the agent though. As they drank and prepared dinner, that familiar need for communication through touch echoed between them like sonar from passing submarines. The agent chose to stand just as near to him as he normally would to his Dean, observing him closely without pressuring for anything more. Midway through cooking the sauce, the agent gingerly voiced his need for answers, inviting their link. 

Unlike the first time, it gave him pause. The frequent naps helped him heal enough to be able to flex this spiritual muscle for a bit longer, though the initial link was the majority of the strain. Although it overjoyed him to know they were able to connect like this; it left him vulnerable in this state. Not only could he move into Dean’s consciousness, see things and hear things bouncing around in his skull, but the link left him psychically unguarded as well. Preparation was key.

Cas searched for a memory of his universe without Dean in it. It was hard enough to convince the agent to believe him devoid of his powers without further complicating matters by telegraphing his newly confessed love was an alternative version of himself. And like fresh paint, it was difficult to keep its bright affectations away from everything else within its reach. His Dean circled around his mental periphery at unexpected intervals. Being so attached in hunting, apocalypse disrupting, and Heaven thwarting for so long would have brought them as close as brothers either way. This freshly manifested connection would seep into his shifting thoughts of home either way. Hopefully, the agent would overlook it; think him as confused as any human would be crashing headfirst into another realm…

Just like they appeared in their initial attempt, the walls of the agent’s mind were littered with scraps of paper, cocktail napkins, poorly ripped sheets of spiral notebook paper, and the occasional bleach white hotel notepad pages. Quickly scrawled thoughts were written across each one in cheap navy blue ink. The lettering of consequential black and white questions were stamped firmly on unlined pages as if written with a clunky disused typewriter with a loose “R” key. Long meandering suppositions exclaimed against a backlit pages like post-it notes on the edges of a computer screen. The big questions, the good and evil, nature of God, meaning of life questions remained tacked behind several layers of more prescient questions, though their foxed edges bulged out behind the others, making their stalwart presence known. The most recent layer of dog-eared musings were written in brightly colored marker in arching, swirling lines contrasting with the faded pale colors of the previous pages. The walls arched in at the center from all the weight of sagging taped up photo copied pages. The agent asked the least interesting but more pertinent questions fogging his mind first. The reflex to answer on autopilot like he would with any unfamiliar human struck, but he kept him off balance by placing the raw nerves of inquisition under shredded pages underfoot like land mines. If he wasn’t two steps ahead and in total control of his mind in this space, a trip up could land him smack dab in the center of a line of questioning he couldn’t convincingly answer. Still he peeled at the corners of notes as he answered his questions truthfully. Of course he sprinkled his cryptic and ambiguous responses with as little detail as possible. It was the most efficient way to not deceive him.

Nevertheless, his questions hit home, pulled at the coattails of his absent family in a way he didn’t expect. Try as he might, he couldn’t help but let the heartache that echoed throughout his chest show when he thought of his Dean, his Sam, or the life he had known. But the sympathy, the genuine fidgeting concern he discovered in his green eyes yanked at every fiber of their bond just as his Dean had at various points in their shared history.

Like innumerable moments before, it was in that moment Cas decided he really liked this version of Dean. Like his Dean he was molded in the clay of his reality, but innately gruff and critical of the food placed freely on his plate. Every truth came with a price, yet truth in some variety was always there if he dug down far enough. While his Dean was willing to pay whatever price to keep people out of harm’s way, this Dean wasn’t aware that his actions would cost him, not really. This Dean only had one life, one soul, one chance but was far less eager to toss in his chips if there was a smarter way. Maybe he saw two moves ahead more often; had more training and resources to create contingency plans with.

When they almost kiss, Castiel felt guilty for wanting this Dean but knew he may never feel the tender warmth of his version again. Telling the agent about his Dean would make his affection seem false, forced even, so he chose not to.

As they scooped up parcels of flaky crust and apple their minds separated once again, Cas recalled their road trip to get more tires for Baby. The Mom and Mom diner he happened across several drives through town before offered up a feast of scrumptious savory pies he’d never thought to try before. After Cas fell, Dean started ordering for him, insisting he be his first guide into the complex and challenging world of human culinary delights. Cas politely stayed quiet, enjoying the twinkle in his eye when Cas delighted in one of his choices. A pattern began to evolve but didn’t strike him fully until they sat at that very diner and a warm plate of sweet potato pie was slid between them. The hunter weighed and measured Cas’s experience with new food by the time he took to draw the fork or other utensil from his lips. The longer it took him to steal the food from it, the longer it took to withdraw from between his lips, the more deluded his sincere gaze became, and transfixed by the universe the pieces fell into. Cas let the languid withdraw tax Dean’s heated senses as he finished the last bit of buttery crust. Dean bit his bottom lip and his tongue swiped over it to calm the pink dusted hue of his cheeks. The waitress practically leapt when Dean called out excitedly for another slice. It became Cas’s favorite.


	7. Oh, Despair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas wrestles with the idea of each Dean then both at once.

Monday through Thursday Cas woke from his afternoon nap only to rearrange himself into a nest of bedding on the side of the couch closest to the front door. Despite being healthier and stronger with each passing day, watching tv or trying to read taxed his faculties. Being alone most of the day failed to irritated him like it did in his world even with how subdued he was into resting his eyes every few hours. Limited to purely human dangers of this world, this Dean was under far less risk of being thrown across a room into a wall by a seven horned creature or particularly surly witch. Any situation he got himself into, he could think or bluff or shoot his way out of as far as he could tell. 

Most nights Dean regaled him with lightly dramatized versions of his day; adding a pun-ridden inner thought and snide comparison here or there. Papercuts or skinned knees were the likeliest of his injuries. Even seeing those made Cas mournful of his absent powers, but he used those instances to re-learn how to cope within those means. After many days of the agent returning only after primetime tv was winding down and the moon hung over the distant horizon, Cas stayed put on the side of the couch furthest from the door. Due to his new dedication to untangling the unfamiliar written word, his reading comprehension turned a corner and his vocabulary exploded. Instead of stealing glances at the still door for another evening, he kept on task and tried to ignore the anticipation boiling under his skin for the agent’s return. The irritation manifested as an itch at the top of his clavicle, only soothed by rolling his shoulder back and forth to scratch at the feeling with the rough texture of his borrowed shirt. He pulled it towards his nose and grimaced at the smell. He needed another shower. Re-adjusting to the many daily needs of his vessel was going as about as well as the first time, but there was a complicating factor this time around. Dean was physical present instead of just an emotionally loaded spring in some far flung Podunk town. Being they were states apart most of the time, the nurturing, protective, cocksure energy whirling around him during the day and now also at night gave him needs he hadn’t felt as acutely last time around. Rewinding and repeating Dean’s dense seeking energy in their link captivated him, but lopsided illogical guilt kept him from earnestly pursuing its tender allure. He reread the sentence he was deconstructing a third time before his hand tested the tenacity of the half-mast erection peeling his attention downward. He needed to tend to this need as well, and if the agent’s schedule repeated like clockwork, he would have the run of the house for another couple of hours. The couch blanket tore from his legs as he made his way to the bathroom. 

The vanity lights beamed unwelcome bright yellow light into his dry eyes. Leaning over in the sink, he took stock of his stark pallor. Going out wasn’t the wisest idea, but maybe he could convince the agent to go for a run with him in the morning, soak some sun back into his neglected hide. Even the backs of his hands lost their color or was he just momentarily recalling absent tattoos cascading down his knuckles? Remembering his last few minutes with his Dean sent flares of want through him. He disrobed and stared at the shower. Performing this draining bodily maintenance would have been a better idea in the shower, but this insistent need to relive that tension overmastered his logic. A palpable ache to caress his thickly tattooed skin spread through Dean’s attentive kisses. His grace made sure he recorded every one of their sensuous interactions in stunning detail. His smell, his taste, the flexing of his body beneath him drove his throbbing cock into his practiced right hand. Memories of saddling onto Dean’s lap, teasing him about how thoroughly he was going to wreck him pushed his hand to move faster while the other hand teased his nipples into sensitive peaks. His grace drained mind tried to summon more limbs, more touches into motion as he imagined taking both of them into his hand and working them both into turgid waves of pleasure. For an instant, he grew still envisioning the agent wrap around him from behind and take over playing with his chest, kissing the back of his neck with persistent affections until he could want nothing more than to return them open mouthed and moaning. As he stroked Dean faster and faster, the agent wound a slick hand down his back to tease his entrance with light caresses and playful kneading. Having both Deans work him into an unsynchronized frenzy shot the white hot need for release to his flaring cock. Full throated moans fell from his lolled mouth and he gripped the counter for stability. The images of Dean’s worshipful kisses against his neck and the agent nibbling at his other shoulder as he finally pushed fingers into his ready tightness threw him head first over the edge and he came with a raspy howl, milking himself with airy grunts. He leaned against the back wall of the bathroom panting. This routine was a sweaty, sordid process, but Cas was becoming more accustomed to conjuring up what unmade him. Inevitably, it was Dean, but he had never imagined both of them at once before. He filed the images from that daydream fling away with a tall neon bookmark.

The shower cleansed him of a day of off and on napping, mental exertion, and vessel detritus, but he could hardly say he felt refreshed. Upon thrusting the curtain to the side, he heard a faint rustle outside of the room. Dean wasn’t due back for some time, so he prepared for an intruder. As soundlessly as he could, he shuffled off the moisture, tossed his towel, and dressed. Ever so quietly, he opened the bathroom door so he could tune his ears to the kitchen, but he heard nothing. Similar amounts of nothing fell upon his ears in the living room, but he tip toed beside the couch regardless. His notebook was set aside and the laptop screen was down. Either the laziest PI in history was skulking around, or Dean was home early. He examined the entryway to find Dean’s wallet, keys, and pistol were in their usual place on the side table. All of his muscles eased knowing he merely had to contend with a very welcome intruder. He retired his stiff careful posture and searched for the source of the noise. Only the creaks and groans of a storm battered house reverberated off of the walls from what he could gather. Since the bedroom door was closed, he assumed Dean was changing, so he idled by the fridge, staring out of the kitchen window framing the only movement he could sense. Moths fluttered around the bulbous light installed outside. A dull ache beset his heart, realizing he may never experience the dips and climbs of flight again. Although his method was not akin to a fluttering bird or bug, he envied them all the same. That all-consuming compulsion to feel the gusts of air channeling him from one place to the next moments later riddled his exposed skin. Would that be a price he would pay to live a tamer life? Vast opportunities for human normalcy, everyday affections, and if he wished softly into the universe – a human death were all worth it, right? Absent a reply, he dragged his eyes from the fluttering white wings outside to the dark hallway. 

There was no noise in the distant bedroom, so he wondered towards it. Dean had been home for some time already, but it was odd for him to go so long without greeting him. He straightened his stance and knocked on the bedroom door. Stern heels padded in his direction shaking his loose posture rigid nervously. The door swung open to the jittery mossy green eyed agent standing before him bare chested. Cas took in every detail between his precisely developed biceps for the first time. From his well-defined pecs to the toned abs holding them up, it was evident that the agent maintained a disciplined fitness regime his Dean didn’t. Goosebumps cascaded down his chest to the dark trail that peeked out over the top button of his work pants. Staring at his unblemished freckled chest was another reminder of its foreign nature. No circular spiked tattoo blessed his pert pec. No hastily engraved flesh or light scars to remind him of the many trials endured during his identical number of rotations around the sun. A change of clothes re-adjusted in his grip practically waving for him to look up at his face. Daring his eyes to flick upwards, a dusting of pink scattered on his cheeks. Their link slithered open from both directions at once like a vibrantly color spattered brush meeting a nude canvas, both irrevocably altered. Cas mumbled something immediately to forestall the agent from focusing on the creeping warmth spattered across his cheeks. The agent held his gaze pensively. Cas scrambled for any distraction to put meager distance between them before his mind fluttered back to his vivid imaginings in the bathroom minutes before. Food! Surely the agent proved to be just as ravenous as his Dean, but this version actually went out for runs. While his Dean mentioned the vigorous cardiovascular activity sparingly, more often than not opting for beer runs in their stead. Ah yes, he hitched back onto his train of thought, dinner and the movie. 

He offered to queue up the movie Dean had mentioned a few days before. The agent recounted what he remembered of a particular scene from the film which stirred the agent up: two cowboys tightly clinging to each other in a sterile looking passageway. Cas equated it to his universe’s similarly romantically charged Brokeback Mountain. The angel agreed to compare the two once he had seen both and the agent selflessly offered to act out the more touching scenes just to help give him a better understanding of the material. At the time Cas didn’t catch the obvious flirting. Replaying the conversation in his head flustered him further so he made a break for the cold bowl of gumbo waiting in the fridge. The agent snagged his wrist and reeled him in for a veritable collection of light, coy kisses. The angel on the other hand made firmer demands of his lips. Blissful vibrations engulfed them, propelled them further into each other’s embrace. Growing fondness bloomed behind his ribcage. A hum passed from his lips as he caught the sensation mirrored in the agent. Cas unwillingly pulled away certain only bruised lips were in their future if they paraded on. 

After filling the agent’s stomach, he fully intended on taking up his favorite new hobby again: holding his hand on the couch in wordless contentment. The agent practically licked the gumbo plate clean, so Cas’s cooking skills were clearly improving. The idea of writing out a grocery list for Dean tickled him especially after his last attempt involved a string of images sent to the agent’s phone like the world’s weirdest list of produce photo negatives. It vaguely surprised him that the man squirreling him away from the government’s clutches would volunteer to assist in the kitchen, ready and willing for any instruction. Of course he had the privilege of eating the results, but he suspected there wouldn’t have been complains even if the meal was subpar. They ate take out less and less as the weeks went on, and that was just dandy for both of them. His mind danced back to ogling his firm features off and on during the film. Midway through the slow paced drama, he cleared the minor mess of the meal and was less than surprised when Dean asked him to pull a dessert out for them to share.

The agent recounted how he ended up seeking refuge in a small diner sporting an old fashioned black and white tile floor. He chewed at the sweet confection, parsing its individual ingredients while trying to name them in his new tongue. Quietly absorbing the details of his recollection sated his curiosity about his day, but all of his senses screeched to a halt as he described the young man he shared a conversation with over a cup of joe. The second he said his name, his heart tripped into an unexpected chasm. Jack. He was talking about Jack. His Jack… their Jack. What if he never saw Jack again? His mind repeatedly bashed against the single thought like a spinning rolodex with only a single card. Caring for him before he even set foot on earth, meeting him for the first time after being resurrected, watching him try and fail and get back up again so many times – all the while feeling like a piece of his heart up and left whenever he was away. Even though he sheltered Miss Kline, he never intended on being anyone’s father. None of them did. Nevertheless he was theirs; an incredibly powerful Nephilim being raised by two human brothers and Seraphim. Training in humanity, hunting, being celestial in a dark and painful world bore a strangely bitter fruit. Jack had grown up and since left the Bunker. Cas accepted his absence with a brave face, only giving into listlessness in spurts over the first few weeks. His Dean complimented his moods with a consistent thrum of irritability. Sam drove headfirst into tangential research but otherwise gave them both a wide berth when their moods struck. Over time, the pain faded further into the background only to flare up when his name was mentioned. Dean became proficient at easing his distress by hugging him and telling an amusing anecdote about his difficulty understanding human logic or social norms. He was theirs and this Dean had no idea. That fact clawed at his core, leaving a gaping need to fill it with the good in this new world. Perhaps on one of their many future days together, this would be a story he could tell. This far off truth may very well bring them together, but nothing that happened back on his Earth was this Dean’s truth, he realized. If their lives were to intertwine further, he would show him the love he had for his family, the love he has for anyone who becomes family.

The temptation was there, hanging gravid around him. In this world, he could have Dean, free from the influence of magic, hell, heaven, and a traumatic childhood that inured him to violence. He was undeniably still brave, kind, dedicated, and generous in every meaning of the word. This Dean never turned him away when he fell, or pinned the job’s frustrations on him, or tried to force a machismo rite of passage on him, or even feared him, not really. There wasn’t a tortured past for Cas to drag behind himself here; he was just a man who fell from the sky, not an Angel of the Lord or powerful tool to be used by whomever pretended to care about him that particular day. Though this force pulling them together like a star into a black hole started with the love he felt for his Dean, it didn’t end there. As the weeks crept by, day by day, he witnessed the influence of their different upbringings and life experiences play out. This Dean was joyful and freely shared affection at any opportunity. It didn’t have to be earned with adversarial smitings and close calls Mighty Cas saved them from. Would he ever have to go back? Why would he give up this gorgeous, morally upright, openly loving version of his favorite Winchester? Sure his scars were in the wrong places and his taste in music was off and he was fairly confident he could live without pie ever again, but the differences didn’t make him any less Dean. This world was different: brighter, full of human misery without magical influences both light and dark. Sure, he couldn’t feel Heaven since he landed. Even more worrying still, he knew deep down his Grace wouldn’t recharge. He finally had the chance he wanted most: to grow old with the one he loved and maybe go somewhere just as nurturing when they passed on. As long as it was with this Dean, he was positive he would make him whole again… right?

If anyone had asked him a month ago, he would have said his reason for living was to keep Dean and Sam happy and hale. When he couldn’t do that, he would settle for keeping them out from under Evil’s boot. So many times he risked his celestial existence for the chance to erase the relentless threat. Dean couldn’t live without Sam and Cas couldn’t exist meaningfully without Dean so they were inextricably bound in each other’s fates. In the end, Cas loved Sam like a brother, happy to sacrifice for his wellbeing. But Dean… Dean was the angel’s righteous man, his first and only non-celestial love, no matter which universe he was in. Probably in every single one, he realized. 

This Dean loved him. In the pulsating warm sphere of their psychic connection, he boldly exposed the nude nerve endings of his affections. He implicitly trusted him in a way his Dean had never given voice to. He let him in, even when his embarrassingly honest thoughts were on full display. His Dean wouldn’t let him inside his head unless it was to save a stranger’s life or to get the upper hand on a supernatural entity. And yet, he let him into his heart all the same. After years of grasping fruitlessly and lamenting missed chances, they found space for each other’s love in their chaotic existences. Their relationship was hard won, but easy to enjoy. Sure his Dean found open signs and words of affection difficult, but it made their infrequent occurrences even sweeter on the tongue. In this world they could live without the stressors of hunting and yearly apocalypses; taking pleasure when they wanted it, never having to overmaster their partner’s shame or novice nerves. This Dean was practiced and self-assured in his sexuality. Cas was sure there were things he could teach him that he saw no other human experience with another. Unguarded and completely trusting around him was where he wanted his Dean to eventually arrive. With their turbulent past would his Dean ever get there?

All at once, this new truth piled on his shoulders. Looking into that near and far future, all he wanted in this world was this Dean. The crinkle of his eyes as he smiles, the grand piano of white teeth singing words into the universe that wouldn’t otherwise be, the gentle persistence with which he cared for everyone around him. Cas was already a lost cause, but that was a conversation for another day – another matter schlepped into the heaping pile of concerns for tomorrow. For today he had to make his flesh croon, make his soul sing as he bones shake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am writing the final parts now, albeit its going slower than I had hoped. I am crossing my fingers that it can be wrangled into submission at chapter 13. We'll see if it agrees with me.  
> If you're interested I also write brief m/m manga reviews on Twitter/Insta @OssuYaoiReview.


	8. Kiss and Tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A terrible idea and an archangel's favorite payment method.

“We need an angel,” he affirmed into the silence of the library.

His brunet mop swayed to the left spotting his brother passing a bookshelf at the far end of the room. “As I recall we were already looking for one.”

Sam’s gall netted an incredulous eye roll from the older Winchester. Using his finger as bookmark, he slapped his currently lengthy tomb down into Sam’s view on the table with a loud thud and flopped the marked page open. “This passage talks about a ‘winged messenger of the Lord’ restoring his heavenly harmonic when he found a ‘Molt of the Divine’. If it means when I think it does, then angel wavelengths can be recalibrated instantly if they find a ground for their divine power.”

His eyes scanned over the passage brimming with hope, but screeched to a stop midway through. “So Cas could come home if he finds something that reconnects him to God - like an angelic power outlet? That’s great, Dean but what the hell is a ‘Molt of the Divine’ and how are we supposed to get it to him?”

Dean shuffled all of his brother’s displeased expressions and landed on his favorite configuration to toss in his direction. “Don’t do that. We’ve been combing through the few books we have over and over and I caught something you missed. Don’t be a bitch about it,” he leaned over and pointed at the image on the following page. A hunched over angel pressing a hand to a gold-leaf inlayed feather lying at his feet at was printed at the center of the page. “All we need is an angel feather.”

Sam was quick to cut him off. “Not quite, Dean. Think back to when we first saw Gabriel’s wings.”

He exhaled deeply at the ceiling in frustration. “An archangel feather? They keep their wings in another plane of existence. How are we supposed to…” He stalled out halfway through staring into the far distance. His pointer finger bounced in Sam’s direction as his grimace flipped into an elated grin. “I got it. We can kill two birds with one stone.”

“This can’t be good,” he murmured. He braced himself against the back of his chair for whatever bright idea spittled out of his maniacally desperate brother.

“Who can see Chuck’s other creations?” he asked grinning proudly.

“Death, but Dean it’s not a good idea to…”

“Pashah, not Billy. Next?”

“Rowena?”

“Well, yeah, but not an option. Keep going.”

“Other angels?”

He squinted and tilted his head. “So close.”

“Archangels,” he answered excitedly. Dean’s vigorous nod washed all levity out of his system. “You want to summon an archangel and take a sample?”

“That and if anyone can tell us where Cas is, it’s Chuck’s chosen few. Three out of the four divine-ish contacts told us Cas was nowhere on Earth, right? So that bellybutton of danger down there zapped him into another one of his universes. Who are the singular beings divine enough to peer into all of Chuck’s playgrounds and point our angel out?”

“Fine,” he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and gamed it out. “Let’s say we find an archangel we haven’t pissed off enough to immediately smite us on sight. How are they supposed to get one of their feathers to Cas? Sure they could point him out but, we can’t even get all the other ingredients open a portal anymore.”

“Can’t we ask this supposed ‘friendly’ to go get Cas for us?”

“These are archangels we were talking about. Since when has one done us a solid out of the goodness of their vessel’s heart?”

“Point taken. Then if they don’t play whack-a-mole with our heads, we just ask to be pointed at the right blue marble.”

His eyes darted from one side of Dean’s head to the other as if to weigh his options. “I mean it doesn’t solve all of our problems but it does get us closer to finding him. This isn’t a good idea, though.”

“You got a better one?” he snarled impatiently. “Didn’t think so.”

Sam stood up and made his way towards the lower level storage rooms. A thought kept him planted in place a few steps away. “If… when this works we are gonna have to start figuring out how to build more bridges, Dean. One day, one of our knocks on an old enemy’s door is gonna bite us in the ass.”

“This is Cas,” Dean’s demeanor softened. “He’s been to Hell and back twice to save us. He’s been our one angel cavalry for years, got us out of the toughest spots ever. Why wouldn’t we do the same for him?”

Sam nodded passively. “I know, Dean. Just…” he half attempted to make a contrary point but was waved away. “You start removing the arch angel warding. I’ll go get the ingredients.”

=======================

The giant brunet assembled the only half of the ingredients they had in stock for the spell with waning ambition. The storage room cleaned up nicely after the fallen behemoth of American engineering was zapped back to the garage where it belonged. Clean up took longer than expected, but the refreshed light bulbs and reorganization made everything way easier to locate than the Men of Letters cataloging system. Some bulging cardboard boxes they recovered were stained with mildew, so he shoved them on lower shelves to dig through as they found time.

The whole harebrained scheme was an indisputably dumb idea though. He felt twice as dumb knowingly traipsing down the flights of stairs to gather up incomplete ingredients for a spell that would only end in them getting curbed by one egotistical asshole of an archangel or another. Even taking a shine to Gabriel hadn’t improved his perception of archangels in general. An instantaneous chill zipped through the soles of his feet up past his knees forcing him to step back from the statement nervously. Who knew if the bugger was pretending to be a glass bottle or hanging talisman resting on a nearby shelf that possessed the power to peer into his inner trepidation? If only he could summon Gabriel himself, ask real nice, flirt a bit. At least Dean wouldn’t have the chance to get crassly standoffish and ruin the deal before it started. Yeah, if he could get the gold haired firebrand alone he could…

A rustling of feathers whisked the stagnant air about, swirling the tempting smell of freshly heated caramel around the room. “Ask and ye shall receive!”

He whipped around to meet the intensely curious stare of an archangel standing a foot short and two steps too close. He sucked in a deep lungful sharply, now certain that this idea outplayed Dean’s terrible idea by a mile.

“So what does ye want?” He quirked an eyebrow and stood even closer.

“Gabriel. Nice to see you, again,” he stiffly greeted.

“Come on, Sammikins,” he chided. “Big bro’s not here to ‘get crassly standoffish’, so just chill out. You need a favor and I enjoy tall, hairy, and handsome’s owing me undisclosed favors.”

Sam stepped back directly into a free standing cabinet and crossed his arms over his chest with all the elegance of a middle school slow dance. “If you’ve been in my head, you already know what I want. Also, ask next time. They say consent is sexy.” His ham-fisted attempt at flirting only spurred the wily archangel on. And that’s what he wanted. Right…?

Gabriel backed up a step, knowing it still left him nowhere to run. “Psshh, like I need any more ammunition. I am aware of what your heart desires, but I just wanna hear it from your pretty little lips. Abundantly pleasurable sexual favors aside, can’t a friend ask a friend for advice? Come on, Sammiecakes.” He zapped them both into Sam’s bedroom and sat at the edge of Sam’s bed. He rubbed the thin green comforter in a circle then patted his lap with a flourish. “You sit here and I’ll listen to any rhetoricals you want.”

Sam looked at the edge of his bed, the archangel’s lap, and his suggestively waving eyebrows in order of interest. A big grin splashed across his face with a dash of sarcasm Gabriel didn’t miss. “Rhetorically speaking then,” he assured him. 

Gabriel leering was as subtle as a wet sock. He bounced up and down on the bed as Sam sat beside him, noticeably miffed Sam didn’t follow his directions to the “t”.

“Let’s say a mutual friend of ours was no longer on our planet. Could you track him even if he were in an entirely different universe?”

“Of course, rhetorically speaking, I could find our friend in any universe my father has his fingers in. There’s a slight problem with using a fantastic tool with a fantastic tool such as myself as a bloodhound, though,” he said reclining onto his elbows, stretching his body out long for further examination.

The veneer of only mild concern once removed fell from his face even as his eyes munched on the lissome stretch of archangel before him. “What’s that?”

“These other universes are like Father’s experiments, a proving ground for tweaking his designs. Sometimes it’s a small change, the call of a robin is higher pitched, or an ameba develops a million years later; minute re-calculations after a previous misstep. In those cases his presence, his influence is small. In other worlds he takes a more hands on approach – manipulates historically valuable people, institutes new ideologies through his messengers. In these cases, he has to actually be present for the change.”

“And?” Sam leaned in, making sure not to miss some grand point he was getting at. This was Gabriel, it could all be leading up to yet another dick joke.

He smiled at him knowingly. “But all good experiments require ‘control subjects’.”

Sam scrutinized his face for meaning. “So there are some places he has no influence? God just creates it and abandons it?”

“See? I knew you weren’t just the cute one. I can flap around from planet A1 to ZZ999, which would take eons by the way, but I would miss planets N5 through R72. Some of them he purposely leaves alone so he can tweak them further down its development cycle. “

Several puppy eye configurations ricocheted off of his visage in an attempt to weasel a better answer out of the obnoxious angel. “There’s gotta be something you can do.”

“Sure, there would be, if we weren’t speaking rhetorically as friends.”

Sam twisted his mouth around in thought, not entirely opposed to owing Gabriel one. Before he could offer anything Gabriel grinned wide. “Consent, Gabe.”

“Ah, but Sammie-long-legs,” he draped an arm around his back with a flourish. The saccharine grin faded slowly and a sincere smirk took its place. Neither expression looked foreign on his face, even up close. “I don’t know where Cas is. If God’s not reaching into whatever world he landed in, I can’t take a peek either. I can, however, suck you down like my favorite lollipop.”

Sam huffed out a defeated laugh. 

=======================

“Sammy!” the baritone familiar voice bellowed from above.

He turned tail to more clearly hear Dean clomp down the stairs in his direction. “What’s up?”

“I got another idea!”

“Oh, thank gawd. Let’s hear it,” he smiled and shuffled some bottles and jars around to make it look like he did a smidgen of anything while he was alone. Luckily Dean seemed too excited to notice. 

“You remember those ‘Angel Tears’? That was the physical evidence that the angel’s Grace was out of alignment, right? What if we could trace the trail of that grace imbalance?”

He crossed his arms over his chest and considered it, squinting at his brother in morse code. If grace desynchronization leaves a material manifestation, what would it even look like? Sound? Radiation? Heat? “You’re thinking we could follow the breadcrumbs of Cas’s jazzed up Grace to whatever place he went to?”

“I mean, it’s worth a shot, right?” he asked smugly.

“So what does Cas’s narcissus triandrus look like?” He started the trek back up to the library with Dean hot on his heels.

“I’m not a kiss and tell type of guy,” he said, smarm dripping from his words.

Sam fake laughed through a frown. “His tracks, Dean. What would he leave in his wake?”

The hunter remained quiet while he paged through the catalog of Cas’s eccentricities, expressions, smells, sounds, tastes, shapes. Nothing helpful crossed his radar as he shuffled through. Recounting the specific endearing details of his personality only served to magnify his worry and consternation. 

The pair made their way back up to the library to continue researching and uncover a viable method of locating the wayward angel. Several tomes into their search, Sam found a tracking spell specifically for cloaked cherubim. Dean went full on bottom of the ninth tie breaker home run excited when Sam floated the theory that he could augment the spell to track Cas. While he paced in protest of his slow progress, Dean freshened Sam’s coffee so many times he was more waiter than hunter. Sam instructed Dean to assemble the common spell components and something of Cas’s he didn’t mind incinerating from their room, mainly as a way to focus his chaotic energy on something other than pestering him. Upon his brother’s return with a few small jars and an obnoxiously orange colored article of wadded up clothing, Sam put the finishing touches on a worn yellow legal pad. They set the fabric ablaze at the center of the cauldron and tossed in the organic elements one by one. An acrid smoke billowed out of the bowl as the synthetic fabric imploded into the shape of a charred root. Sam recited the four line incantation then launched into a coughing fit. Dean patted him on the back and stared into the fumes for any sign that their plan produced anything other than cancerous second hand fumes.

They traded searching expressions, but came away with nothing. Dean dumped his lukewarm coffee on the smoldering pile, letting the defeat wash over him. “Nice try, Sammie. Back to the drawing board, then…” 

Dean scraped the wooden chair legs across the floor to sit back down, but a light noise condensed in the background amongst various everyday bunker hums. He pushed the chair back to position and turned his head slowly from side to side in an effort to isolate the noise. 

Sam only noticed his squint after the next book in front of his brother failed to open in his peripheral vision. “Dean?”

He brought a forefinger to his lips, elongating his breaths to minimize noises to weed through. His slow swerving about the rows of shelves only served to amuse his befuddled brother. No matter which direction his ventured in the room, the noise didn’t clarify or increase in volume so he made larger sweeps: kitchen, bedroom hallway, back down the stairs. Only when he considered it as an external noise did he make any headway. The moment his foot landed in the map room the constant vibration solidified. Small steps around the illuminated map brought him closer to identifying the sonorous detail: the flapping of very tiny wings. He couldn’t help but smile which morphed Sam’s confusion into deeper concern. On the eastern end of the table he grabbed a coaster to mark where the hum was loudest. The coaster slid in every cardinal direction on the map. Sam followed its path intently with mix of hopeful grins and apprehensive frowns as Dean gauged the right location. He grinned remembering Cas’s fondness for the tiny winged creatures as his final shuffle led his coaster over the northeastern United States. Fingers pulled the coaster away, but the louder buzzing only returned when he hovered over a finger’s width and an inch south of DC and like a devoutly possessed planchette.

“It worked? Is that where the trail leads?” Sam asked, watching his brother lift and lower the coaster.

Despite his wide smile, he shrugged. “It’s a start.”

“What was it? What were his breadcrumbs?” he asked making his way back to his laptop.

“The humming of a drone bee,” he smirked, staring at the spot on the map with rapt fascination as he continued to test the coaster’s precision.

“Figures,” he smirked and started tapping away at the keys.

“I got us a location… So he’s hovering over bizarro world DC?”

“Seems reasonable, but it leaves us with the same problem. We don’t have the ability to create a portal.” He scanned Dean’s reaction and added, “No matter how much you yell at me.”

He dropped the coaster and squared his shoulders. “Yeah, I’m sorry, Sammy. When it comes to Cas…”

“Yeah, I know, I know,” he cut him off. “Let’s just search to see if there are any anomalies in that area. As an aside, you may want to put that archangel warding back up.”

He rejoined his brother at the table with more faith than he woke up with in several days. “Oh, shit. I kinda forgot. Don’t give me that face. You know that warding doesn’t ‘ward’ so much as it zaps them to a boring empty Bolivian crypt over and over again until they give up out of annoyance or superman their way out of it. Even if one did get through, whichever asshat it was would be super grouchy by the time they actually got inside the bunker anyway. Now we don’t have to put it back up again so it’s a win-win.” His dismissive demeanor ground to halt as he added, “Wait, why?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am writing the finale now, but I will post the chapters as they are edited pretty quickly from here on out. Thank you for reading this series.


	9. I Plead and I Pray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel regains his Grace.

While the agent reclined in post coital glow unaware, torrential waves of power soaked into every fiber of the angel’s vessel with the lightest graze on the necklace’s brass horns. His return to relative mortality scaled his grace’s effects back to a low simmer so fighting his Grace’s initial burn was a task unto itself. Now at one with it again, he sealed off the link in his direction, barring the agent from sensing the scorching power differential. With the story of how the necklace came into his possession dropping from his lips, it was clear he didn’t sense anything out of the ordinary, but Castiel had to be sure. A cavernous contentment billowed over their link, sending Dean into divine sleep. Bone deep conflict overmastered the calm medium he surrounded them in, driving him away from the blissful creature beside him. Untangling himself was trivial, pulling himself away proved to be more difficult.

Naked feet dragged him into the backyard to surrender the short lived heat passed from the agent’s amorous affections to the moonlit sky. Under the stars, he imagined waking the next morning to expertly brewed coffee, the next week’s run around the neighborhood in the agent’s oversized hoodie, that weekend’s binge watching marathon, the love they would make under the scrutiny of well-lit faces on the flat screen, and the trees they would plant the following season. The moon’s gravity on the planet buzzed in his celestially blessed ears for the first time in weeks, a singular sensation of oneness with his father’s creation. Instantly he wanted to give it back, deafen himself to its lulling hymn. He didn’t need it. All he needed were the warm pops of the agent’s records in his ears, his sighs as he slept, the baritone vibrations of him singing along to an old record with intertwined fingers as they grew too fragile to stand up from their perch on the bare floor without creaks of their own. He turned his head up to feel the call of moonlight on his face, sense its chill through his eyelids and breathe in the cold night air. So quickly after his Grace’s assimilation, his skin blocked the uncomfortable sensation. Pretending the small hairs on his skin shifting provided any information other than the direction of air currents around him was forced like trying to drive a nail into a wall with a stick of butter. The chafing anger, useless as it was defeating, crawled under his scalp. The molten power of his Grace synthesizing under the ethereal light did little to sooth him as natural as it felt.

A very human need for sleep under a thick comforter next to the warm body of his agent drew him out of the starlight back into the blue black bedroom. He lay right where he left him, lips partially opened, seeing a far off dream of a sun drenched beach with Cas in tow. His heart took a quick left as he peered into the link, pulling his toasty form up to recline again on his shoulder. The agent instinctively wrapped a leg around his, nuzzling into him. His reaction mirrored his dream state counterpart slumped down on their beachside towel for an afternoon nap after hours of sun soaked swimming. Both in the tether and in the dark night of their bedroom, he slung a possessive arm around his back, and kissed his forehead in response.

With his mojo back, he could go anywhere but desperately wanted to plant shrubs and ferns on the small plot of land the house he grew to call home was erected upon. At the end of the day, was this his fault – a self-inflicted wound he knew better than to carve into himself? After the night they just shared, did he really want to go back? If he was as honest with himself as he was with the agent earlier in the evening it was more of a debate than he led on. If he hadn’t found the necklace, Dean’s necklace so close all this time, there was little doubt he would stay put – get to know this Dean better than he knew himself, become friends with Sam again, create a new family. His thumb rubbed miniscule circles into his dewy ridges between his ribs. Even in his dream, Dean curled into it, unabashed in his surrender to the feeling. Outside of the link, he let out a little snore. Castiel smiled, continuing the caress long after his thoughts pulled him back to the present both there and in a world billions of miles away.

His eyes grew heavy, ferrying him further and further into the tether to play where he felt happy and safe. The fibers of his Grace ticked back into place one by one in the distance like forgettable wallpaper.

=======================

The curling steam rising from the coffee mug the agent brought to the bedside to coax him into wakefulness split him in two. His emerald green eyes read prose from the sleep lines on his face affectionately. He rested his grey speckled mug on the bedside table and prodded at the door of their tether playfully as Castiel grimaced for a reason Dean could only guess was bladder related. Total assimilation of his Grace was complete and with it came full control of their tether. Disguising his most private layers of thought was cherub’s play now. For the first time since he landed, he could present Dean with a fully assorted platter of ruminations while masterfully keeping some processes to himself. He could finally hide his conflicted reluctance in plain sight and have Dean none the wiser. The relief of knowing that never came.

He flirted and prattled on about what they would do after he returned home for the day, but the angel remained distracted skin deep. He sat up sending the blanket tumbling down to his legs. The fear of chills or scalding hot coffee dripping as the hot liquid sloshed over its edges was no longer a consideration. The sandy blonde human still wrapped him up carefully in the comforter and sat beside him, casting amorous tidal waves onto his shores.

By his calculations, he had enough Grace to return to his world, but barely. His shoulders noticeably shivered at the thought and his companion wrapped around him and ran his arm up and down his back until it subsided. As an angel, he had nothing but time to decide. As the partner of a human man, a single piece of a human family, they had decidedly less. No possibility saved him from the hollowed out agony of separation. 

At first, the possibilities of this world were wondrous. This graceless life pained him in practically none of the ways it had the first time. The prospect of a happy human expiration surrounded by friendship and light with nary an angel or demon in sight filled him to the brim with contentment. Then he rediscovered Eros, the mounting mortal synthesis of love in his body without the aid of an approximated spell. A mortal’s envisioning of forever floated in his mind as he fell asleep each night with this Dean. Now he chastised himself for luxuriating in its welcoming spring.

The agent drained the last of his mug and placed a warm kiss on his plush lips, closing his eyes in surrender to the moment. Castiel put his grey mug down next to his on the bedside table and craved that closeness once more. He shoved the elated agent back onto the bed sending him into a low octave chuckle. Laugh lines tinged his eyes as Castiel leaned down over him, catalyzing a flurry of tender touches. Nothing was as important as proving to this man how dear he was; how full his Grace felt all because of him. Petting transformed into low seeded groping and frenzied pawing. The agent didn’t even object as the lights of his phone’s clock warned him how close he was cutting it to making it out the door on time, even if it flickered past their tether. The angel swept the notion away as he took him into his mouth and lashed his core with white desires. The pair laid bare their affections across the tether, prose after prose of adoration coaxing that heat to the surface again.

A fissure formed as Castiel kissed him out of the door fifteen minutes after he normally slammed the door and speed off towards simple mortal peril. Against that same door, he gripped his mouth shut and slumped to the tile entrance floor. His fingers didn’t gather up the moisture welling from his eyes. It’s nakedly fall then subsequent splat echoed loudly into their empty home. As cumbersome as his melancholy became to hide in their tether as they made love in the minutes before, it was never so clear. This freshly baked apple pie halcyon suburban house was not his home.

=======================

Every second his Grace was intact, his thoughts shot to a universe billions of miles away. The images it summoned pulled him out of the nurtured sensations of his surrounds, tore him from the cotton texture against his fingers as laundry fell into the washer. If he was gone but a moment, none of this would matter to Dean or Sam past the initial explanation. They might even forget it happened entirely if he was convincing enough. If he was absent any longer, he would be driven explain where he was and how he toiled to return to them. His return being the result of an unlikely fluke was hardly an acceptable answer. While he could engage in humanity’s favorite past time and lie his way out of it, he and Dean had just recently arrived at a place where the truth, the unedited entire truth was more a comfortable proposition. The blaring irony that it was just as necessary as it had been previously didn’t elude him. He clamped down on a selfish impulse to travel out into the link. That swell of resolute love wasn’t meant for this Dean and he would have sniffed it out, adding onto the already copious unsealed envelopes of wondering littering his center.

The angel questioned if he should tidy up any effect of his physical presence in the house, leave the agent with less to remind him of their time together. Anticipating the agent’s thoughts was never worth betting on. He proved himself to be as stunningly resourceful as he was belligerently chaotic between the ears. The self-removal process started with hovering over the neatly piled records and wire coiled record player on the living room floor. He inventoried each record and sleeve, recounting each song in order of his affinity to it. The sleeves all fit neatly in their crate, but the record player rested at an awkward angle when he returned it to the closet shelf he excavated it from. He pulled the accordion doors shut and let his eyes far over each piece of furniture. Ultimately, a small chest of drawers on the far wall drew his eye. Thinking back it surprised him that the agent didn’t place the divine totem in the small dish rested on its surface along with his braided bracelets and beaded leather bands. They reminded him of his Dean so much he chose to ignore them the first few days of his stay. At that moment, he slipped a couple on and swayed his wrist from side to side just to gauge if they felt different on his vessel. His heart fell out of the task once his eyes fell upon their… the agent’s bed. Shuffling purposefully out of the bedroom into the living room again didn’t swat away the ache sneaking up on his heels. The blankets they hid under as they watched movies and lay on top of while injecting fluttering sentiments into each other’s open mouthed kisses tugged at the edges of his Grace hastily. He could visualize himself falling back into sleep atop its folds only to be shaken awake by the agent’s tender jeering as afternoon dissolved into evening. Suddenly every corner of the house lit up a facet of their relationship he would treasure, a memory his treacherous mind would draw from when life back with his family was tested by their own faults. He brought the blanket up to his nose and committed every molecule of scent to his perfect Seraphim memory. The need to fly sent jitters to his knees, yet his desire to stay glued him in place.

There was no choice, not really. The only options were to vacate now without an explanation, leaving the agent to wonder what offense he had committed against his angel until his dying day or hazard his wavering nerves and say whatever he needed to hear when he came home regardless of how true it was. There was no way to preemptively console his absence other than wiping the agent’s memory. The evidence of that method’s effectiveness on a Winchester was previously made clear. They always ferreted out a way to bypass the least hurtful process. The agent would find a way somehow and would never forgive him for it. That left the truth, and the truth was an unwieldy as a blanket that refused to fold correctly in his arms. Its worn bits and feathered edges made it unsightly but the solace it could give him was the best he could offer.

The woven fabric prickled at his chin as he wrapped his shoulders. As foolish as it was to think it could brush down plumes of anxiousness, he had to try for the agent. Counting down the completed obligations of a good house guest, he found himself with only little to do. Keeping busy these last weeks cleaning and tidying the agent’s home left him with little to do but pine and wallow. His ear hardly hit the sidearm of the couch when a vigorous yank at their tether pulled him off the couch entirely and onto the recently vacuumed carpet. Back on his feet, he peered across the link, a much further distance than their link had ever reached beforehand. Instead of meandering ripples from a grey afar, the agent’s fear plugged him into the sensations against his skin and the noises bouncing off of his eardrums, like an open window into his body. It shouldn’t have surprised him, not when his Grace levels left barely enough room for cream, but the bass of his pounding heart propelled him into the chilly back yard. 

He squinted into the open sky, shaking at the tether to gauge its orientation. Locating him felt like trying to find a keyhole in the dark. There was no way to know what reckless use of his Grace in this world could do now, so he concentrated on terminus of the tether above all else. No light, no sound, no warmth, no other being than this Dean. An overture passed and still he was no closer, fumbling in that abyss. Red splashes of immediate danger spilled down the link only to dry up again, but it served as an echo location for that minute, letting him feel the edges of the keyhole as he fumbled. Once more, the slough of peril spiraled right at him and the key clicked into place. Joyous relief overcame him as it turned clockwise. His core echoed with the resolve. Saving Dean was all that mattered.


	10. Betrayal by Proxy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas reemerges.

At the tail end of a breath he didn’t remember holding, his feet landed on solid ground. Back within the protective brick walls and grey pillars of the bunker, home in the halls of the life he knew, he turned his head from the vanishing pinhole of space beside him to the doorway of Dean’s man cave. He barely registered where he landed, only feeling a rift in his Grace where the link probed into the vacuum of empty space. Glimpses of the agent bounced back at him, but he knew it was only a residual sensation in the oversensitive and withering tether. He brushed the back of his sleeve over his face, not entirely sure if it captured more of his tears or the agent’s. Everything atom around him suffocated him with its wrongness, like he was the round peg on this square universe. Then again, it wasn’t the first time he felt out of place on this planet. Not even close. 

His feet wanted to run towards his family, pretend he was never absent, as if no time had passed, like none of it had ever happened. The thought send nauseating waves permeating from his center all the way out into his extremities where his limbs lost strength combating the sensation. Silencing another reluctant exhale, another frightfully bitter tear escaped down his cheek. His wings wanted to make a break for it in the other direction. Away, it would hurt less. Away he wouldn’t be reminded unless he wanted to be. How could he regret leaving? How could he not?

He looked around the den to gauge the destruction of his reentry but found no chairs, rugs, or books askew. At least that was a mild relief. 

A sudden hand on his shoulder corralled him back into the physical world and the brothers stared at him aghast. Cas ducked away from Dean’s touch and stared at him still disoriented and a bit quailed. 

“Cas,” Dean attempted to placate his anxiety with a calming tone. “We’ve missed you… I’ve missed you so bad, man. We’ve been tearing the lore apart trying to get you back from that rift. What triggered that thing?”

The angel shook his head in disbelief, a sick feeling washed over him like being pulled entirely unwillingly around by the gravitational forces of a rollercoaster. “I do not know,” he coughed at using his vocal cords after so long, wetness prickling at the corners of his eyes again.

“How long were you in that other place?” He kept a distance from him, sensing his unease.

“41 days, 14 hours, 56 minutes and 14 seconds,” he croaked out roughly.

Dean, his Dean as rough and uncensored as he remembered, looked him up and down, clearly fighting the urge to draw him into his arms and inspect him for evidence of harm with pleading palms. Sam stood warily nearby gawking from a distance.

He needed open air. He needed to be free, away from the darkness of the bunker, home of his past, present, and future. His breaths came in short, constrained waves as the Winchesters stood still mesmerized by his unceremonious reappearance. Dean inched towards him with an outstretched hand. His brother rested a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back slightly. The angel’s stoic demeanor was clearly failing him. Not wanting to unnerve them any further, he pleaded for a moment alone and flew to the most calming place in the bunker. He needed time and space, which he suddenly had in spades.

===============

Dean was too hamstrung by exasperation to follow. He stood sentry in the room waiting for Cas to return or pleaded with the universe to reunite them as he researched nearly every waking hour in those forty-one days. Sam couldn’t tear his eyes from the irate confusion cycling over Dean’s face. He couldn’t help but jump out of his skin as Dean clamped his arms around his head and yelled in searing frustration. His elbows bowed in as he turned away from Sam, hiding his distressed expression between plaid sleeves. Sam knew better than to draw attention to his outburst, so he offered up something else.

“I’ll go find him if he’s here. I need you to do something while I look.”

The elbows fell away with an encumbered inhale. “What’s that, Sammy?”

“You got lunch all over your shirt. Go freshen up and we’ll come find you,” he said, tugging at his outer layer for emphasis.

“What are you talking about? I didn’t…” he halted as the wafting odor of his shirt hit his nose. “Oh, uh… I’ll go do that…”

He knew full well Cas wouldn’t mind the perfume of an anxiety ridden Dean’s unwashed two day funk, but he did and Dean needed a distraction while he played angel whisperer.

They split off in opposite directions. His feet took him all the way to the top of the staircase headed down to the basement to start from the bottom up when a thought hit him. This was Cas, human-esque or not, angels don’t bury themselves when cornered. He high tailed it up the stairs to the next and the next to the last final winding flight past a fallout shelter sign leading to the rooftop. There with his back to the railing, he found his friend staring up into the evening sky.

His greeting didn’t pull his kiting eyes to ground. “Sam.”

He walked closer step by step, monitoring for the same unease the proximity to Dean pressed into him. Bewildered, he found none. He walked right up to him and wrapped his long arms around him hugging tightly. “Where the hell were you, Cas?”

He half-heartedly tried to pull away after the initial squeeze, but remained in his firm grasp, soaking in all the tumultuous emotions ladled into him. “I missed you too, Sam.”

Sam constricted further knowing he couldn’t hurt the angel, but he had to get a point across. The veritable catalogue of shit he put them through was not to be ignored this time. “That’s nice to hear. Not what I asked though.”

Cas slumped a fraction and turned his head down. “I would prefer not to discuss it. I don’t have satisfactory explanations.”

Sam gripped even tighter and Cas puffed against him a couple of times. He waited for the accompanying laughter, but heard nothing. The chest against his rattled with a harsh pounding he understood well, but puzzled him coming from an angel. “Wait, are you hurt?” He pulled back but held him by the shoulders.

His face scrunched into an impossible configuration and he looked away. He clutched at Sam’s sleeve, but didn’t drive him out of his personal space.

“You’ve gotta talk to me. Cas, man, you’re scaring me. You’re going to freak Dean out even more,” he pleaded. 

He let go of the sleeve and pushed backwards against the railing. “Let it be, Sam.”

“No way. We talk about this right now or I tell Dean you spent a month at the Playboy mansion without him and didn’t even bring back photos,” he needled.

The joke didn’t even register on Cas’s radar. “It’s complicated.”

“Oh, Dean loves hearing that phrase. Let me go get him, he’ll…” He practically spit as Cas yanked him away from the door.

“As you wish, but knowing won’t make this easier for either one of us,” he affirmed and closed his eyes to the setting sun.

Sam stepped back and crossed his arms. “I know your Grace has been out of sorts since you absorbed the raijyuu energy. We have been operating under the assumption that your Grace recalibrating to Dean on top of the stress of the foreign energy caused some unforeseen interactions. That sound about right?”

His puffy haunted blue eyes squinted into the distance between them. After a few moments, he shook his head in contemplative rebuke. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you are only partially correct. Some Angels experience loss in a similar spectrum to the way humans do, while others are less susceptible to its pull. You have met the most blindly faithful of my brethren who care for nothing outside of God. For more emotionally susceptible angels the healing process changes our inner resonance, morphs the frequency of our Grace. Assimilating the raijyuu’s energy indeed caused a minor welter in the following weeks, but was completely ejected well before I was pulled into that portal fell from another sky. What I encountered in that other world refutes your assumption.”

“How so?” he asked uncrossing his arms.

He turned around to lean over the railing and waited for Sam to join him before he spoke. “At first I thought it was a Djinn dream or some magic induced façade. I fell again but as time passed, it became apparent I wasn’t on Earth.”

“Wait, you weren’t outside of DC?”

He tilted his head and nodded slowly. “I was, but not Earth’s version.”

“We were maybe an hour from heading out there. It’s good you came back when you did… I mean, it’s great you came back period. I’m rambling now. Continue.” 

“I was found grievously injured and taken to a nearby hospital. The language they spoke wasn’t decipherable such depleted Grace, so I had to learn. There were no angels, no demons, no magics in that place, so I had no source to draw power from. The man who found me kept me from being discovered, even before he knew what I was. He took great risks to ensure my safety. We bonded,” he gripped the railing and straightened his arms.

“Well it’s good you had support, right?”

He clenched his teeth and inhaled the evening air between them like distracting himself from a mysterious internal pain. “On a few occasions, you and I have connected our consciousness in a way Dean refuses to allow.”

“Yeah, I remember. And I think we both know now why he didn’t want to, you know… let you in,” he mused mirroring Cas’s lean on the railing.

His face contorted but he huffed out a smirk. “My Grace still reaches out for him, but I would never connect with him in that way without his consent. I could have saved us so much energy in the past if he had just…” the thought dropped out and he picked a previous one back up quietly. “This man, this FBI agent, let me into his home, fed me, clothed me, kept me happy despite not knowing how or if I could ever return. Not having to worry about our safety from nefarious entities every day relaxed me, opened me up to possibilities I never knew existed.”

Sam started to stiffen beside him, but listened patiently.

“That world had its own complications, its own threats. For the most part, this man guarded me from all of it until facing up to it was unavoidable. He spoiled me, bolstered me when my resolve waned, cared for me tenderly,” he almost hushed himself, daring the confession into being. His palm ran over his chest absently.

All Sam could do was stare and listen, even though he wanted nothing more than to silence him. He was his friend, but hearing this would tear his brother apart. Was Cas expecting him to keep this a secret? 

He stared directly at the diminishing light on the horizon and pressed on. “Our connection was reliable and strong. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to come back to my family from that many galaxies away. I began thinking about it less and less and started planning a life in that world. I couldn’t feel you. I couldn’t feel Dean or Jack or anyone I knew. It started to feel normal, the weight of apocalypse after apocalypse lifted from my shoulders. Then I stumbled across an artifact that returned my Grace to me. In an instant, I knew I had enough Grace to eventually return, but Sam, it started a cascade. Angels sprung into being in that world without a guiding hand. I had to let someone know, had to… I couldn’t leave him though, not right away,” he said fidgeting with the chipped cement roof with his foot. “I told him about the angels, showed him what I was, and pointed him in their direction. Then I came back.”

“Cas, were you in love with him?” he asked, unsure of how betrayed it came across.

“He and I could communicate in a similar way to how I did with both of you using my Grace and something else, but it was unhampered by mistrust or fear. The new permeations, the fresh growth of my augmented Grace allowed for our bond to establish such a link. As powerful and altering as it was, it was not in my power to blink into another world no matter how malleable my Grace became. In that link, he showed me he felt it as strongly as I did,” he admitted.

“I can’t believe this,” he growled. “Do you know how stir crazy Dean has been? And over there you were fucking some other guy?! After all you two have been through, you just threw it away for…”

“Enough!” he spat sending the gravel of the rooftop bouncing with the force of his demand.

Sam snapped his lips shut and crossed his arms again.

“As I said, it’s complicated.”

“Doesn’t sound that complicated to me.”

“It… It was Dean,” he committed the truth to the night sky with thick assertion.

He tilted his head and asked, “What?”

“The man… the agent I was with was that world’s Dean. You were there, too. So was Jack, but I never met him.”

“So you were in some sort of Cas in Wonderland universe?” His tense shoulders slumped back into a neutral position.

“That metaphor is surprisingly apt,” he reasoned.

“Huh, ‘complicated’ is a good word for it.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you or Dean, but I need more than a handful of minutes to figure it out. I didn’t know how to explain it to you, and I certainly have no idea how to explain it to Dean.”

“If he would let you mind meld with him or ‘link up’, this could be rectified easily.”

“I wouldn’t want to do that now,” he said, growing as still as a signpost.

Sam considered Cas’s perspective, pulling his stance and his tone apart then resorting them into a human vessel. “Because it still hurts too much; being away from him, the other Dean.”

“And other things. I need time to grieve, I think,” he concluded, slumping down weakly.

He patted the angel on the back, “I know what it’s like to lose your heart, but so does Dean. When the time comes, you should tell him about all of it.”

“I’m not asking you to keep a secret from your brother,” he insisted.

“You don’t have to, Cas. Just, give him something or he’ll be on you like a fresh steak until you do.”

He smirked, “I have met him.”

“A couple of him,” he joked timidly.

“If I can ask…” he whispered sheepishly.

“Yeah, Cas. Anything.”

“I’ve lost companions before. When I was an angel, I could cling to their passing as meaningful, for the good of Heaven. After you two brought me into your lives, I shared in your loses, but none of them were intimate relationships. How do you get over someone like that? We’ve lost him before,” he stated then let the sentiment fall at their feet.

“But this is different. Yeah, I get it,” he rationalized and swayed his weight onto his other heel. “Look, give yourself some time. Indulge in the things you love doing. Rest your mind. There’s no rule saying you have to get over someone in a day or a week or a month or even a year. Be sad. Be angry. Be whatever; just know Dean and I are here for you.”

“I appreciate that, Sam. How would you break this kind of news to your partner?”

The corner of his lip folded into a crooked pleat as he thought about it. “How would I tell someone I love that while I was in a different universe I fell in love with their copy and returning to the original makes me miss their copy even though I still love them? Or how do I tell them I love both of them but it hurts not have them both? That’s a lot to untangle. You mind if I get back to you on that?”

The angel sighed heavily and lifted his head to the darkening sky. “Not at all, Sam.”

“Can I tell Dean where you are? I’m sure he’s gonna blow a gasket if you make him wait any longer,” he asked and tossed a thumb back towards the bunker door.

His dark crown bobbed up and down as he nodded at the first twinkles of evening stars.

“And it’s good to have you home, Cas,” he added. Cas still didn’t turn to face him, so he headed back down the flights of stairs to retrieve his freshly showered train wreck of a brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote chunks of this chapter while wading through the first half of 'The A Side'. I knew Cas would return home to a very messy Dean and all that fallout needed it's own venue. Switching perspectives that late in the other story would have dragged it on and become very messy amongst the final chapters in the AU. Since this chapter has seen the editing cleaver more times than I care to count, I hope it was easy to follow.


	11. A Song Too Blue to Even Use

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean watches Cas crash land.

An abrupt concussive impact shook the lower floor of the Bunker sending Dean bolting into his repurposed rec room where he guessed the collision originated. As a painfully familiar head of dark hair came into view, his heart leapt into his throat from subbasement levels. Cas reemerged from some space wrinkle in the recently all but forgotten hang out spot. Tightened muscles in his chest unclenched, oblivious until that moment how much that subconscious reflex was draining him. His family was that much closer to whole again. The glee radiating off of him instantly dampened when Cas’s eyes bobbled about the room scouring every surface for anything familiar. After calling out to him, Sam stopped him from even approaching. Something was terribly amiss. It smacked of the moment he first discovered Lucifer inhabited Cas. This time despite the circumstances was not so dire, but an alien woody smell wafted off of his unfamiliar clothes. He donned a strange heather band t-shirt under a fall jacket and relaxed jeans with holes worn at the knees. A couple of braided leather bracelets adorned his wrist similar to the protective ones Dean habitually wore but Cas had never taken to previously wearing; something about being impractical and ineffective for an Angel of the Lord. Cas’s hair was also noticeably longer, bangs falling over his forehead with a slight curl. All the possibilities of his absence would exist in his mind only until he explained his whereabouts the past three weeks or his forty-one days. What was that hesitance to he explain himself right away? Was it too awful for him to comprehend? Even worse than hell?

The weak tremors of his hand made it hard to shave. He was reasonably sure he washed his hair twice after zoning out mid-shower, too. Cas didn’t even sneer when they reunited in Purgatory, so the angel giving him the side eye for a couple days of hygiene negligent research binging wasn’t likely. Now so clean Cas could have eaten off of him, he threw on pair of worn in jeans and a plaid button down at the top of his yet-to-be-folded clean clothes pile and barely waited for Sam to give him the news.

What if Cas was mad at him for not finding him first? What if he had a memory block like when he became Emmanuel and all their time together was inaccessible? He was halfway through spinning his anxiety into a skyscraper height tornado when his brother knocked on the doorframe of his room.

“You okay?” he asked with wide eyed concern.

“Yeah, I’m good. I’m good. Did you find him? Is he a’right?” He pushed his palms into the comforter to help lift himself up when Sam raised a flat palm motioning for him to sit back down. 

Sam closed the door and stood tall beside it. “He’s unharmed just overwhelmed, I think.”

“I get that. I should go see him then.” He lifted off the bed just for Sam’s hand to usher him back down. “What aren’t you telling me, Sammy?”

His brother wrestled his jaw back to an overall neutral expression. He appeared to scrutinize the cleanliness of Dean’s floor then spoke softly. “He’s still processing what happened. This is gonna take patience and consideration.”

“Is… is he traumatized or something? Was the place he was trapped in that bad?” He began to fidget out of frustration.

“You’ll have to ask him. Look, Dean, remember what it was like when Cas came back the first time?” After getting a nod he continued, “Cas was back at one hundred percent basically right away. And after he fell it took a lot longer for him to be comfortable in his skin, right? Well this is somewhere in the middle. We can support him, but he needs to make his own headway.”

Suspicion prickled in his lungs. “He told you where he went, didn’t he?”

“And I’m sure he’s gonna tell you, too. He’s up on the rooftop,” he said and barely dodged Dean springing up from the corner of his mattress.

In the increasing distance he could hear his brother warn him to be patient again. As he climbed one set of stairs after the other his heart skipped. He felt off kilter, deliriously relieved but suffocated under the weight of the unknowns. At the top of the stairs, he peered through the crack in the doorway carelessly left open.

The angel leaned forward with his forearms hanging over the railing silently. If he was closer to human on the mortal scale, he was dressed too lightly for the evening winter breeze, Dean fussed. He had been gone for way too long. He was lonely. There were a thousand reasons to wrap his arms around his shoulders and never let go. Still he stood firm gazing at the friend he scryed universes for in vain for days on end. 

The angel ran a palm over his hair and licked his lips which moved but no sound carried over them. Tension folded over his shoulders just watching him struggle blindly. Because of the years the Bunker sat in disuse, the door’s failing metal hinge rusted. The door opened with a hollow scraping sound and he waited for Cas to join his gaze. “Welcome home, Cas.”

“Thank you, Dean,” he greeted him, but only turned a quarter of the way. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you a proper greeting before.”

Several bits of gravel bounced off of his shoes as his feet crawled tenuously towards him. “How are you feeling?” He perched on the railing a few inches from Cas to test how bothered he would be by it.

Cas’s eyes remained on the sky as he shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”

“You will be, yeah. Tell me about right now, though,” he request grew soft around the edges.

“I am uncertain,” he answered. He filled his porous response in with the uncertain moroseness gracing his fine features. 

The hunter inched his left hand towards Cas’s on the railing but laid it to rest an pinky’s reach away. He craned his neck upwards to find the star that captured Cas’s seemingly unshakable attention. The sun had long since set and the stars twinkled brightly in every direction. If it wasn’t for the chill, it would have been a downright romantic view. If this billowing uneasiness wasn’t plaguing his love, there would have been the possibility of it still heading in that direction. Over the years, they came to know each other in the silence between thoughts. Cast off glances and abandoned stares steered their ships into each other’s paths, but their poorly timed or ill-considered thoughts careened them in opposite directions of the globe. Behind his ribs, he sensed the silence driving them apart again.

“I remade you and reconstructed your broken parts many times over. I can tell you have been wearing yourself thin,” he said, his voice crackled on the deep o’s.

“You don’t sound so hot yourself there, buddy.” If things were normal, he would offer Cas some hot tea to soothe his throat. Then again, he could mojo away the malady before Dean would have locked into helicopter mode. Well, better to get caught trying. “Why don’t you come downstairs? I’ll make you something to drink for that sore throat.”

“It’s not sore. The muscles are weak.”

The lack luster explanation dragged Dean’s attention from the sky above. “Let me guess, your Grace is depleted so you can’t heal yourself.”

His head hung at the lowest angle of his nod. “Until it recharges, I will probably sleep at night for the foreseeable future.”

“Your Grace was only trickling in before you disappeared. Anything I can do?” His pinky crept closer.

Cas eyed his subverted infiltration with a thin hint of a smile. “I will let you know if I think of anything. I’m quite exhausted, but I will take you up on your offer of tea.”

Dean had to tamp down his excitement in every motion, the overjoyed strut, the ecstatic flick of guiding hands, and the delighted hum threatening to burst from his throat. Back in his manically cleaned domain, the water bubbled as the kettle filled and was set on the stove on medium high heat. Cas sat cautiously quiet stroking one thumb against the other. The urge to round up behind him and hug him tightly from behind would have been a welcomed sign of affection only a couple of months before. The thought chafed him as Cas sat distant and unbothered mere inches from him. Instead of fixating on it, he gathered honey from the fridge. He placed it in the company of a teabag and the brown handmade mug they picked up in Tulsa courtesy a Mom and Mom knickknack shop they discovered while a large lunch settled in their stomachs.

The angel’s eyes brushed along its rounded edges with a half-smile. He extended an open palm on the metal table into Dean’s space. The invitation for a minor caress wasn’t lost on Dean, but he needed more after so long apart. Even the couple a feet of the table seemed like a painful expanse, so he occupied as much as he could. He laid his cheek on the presented palm with a deep sigh. The uptick in his heartbeat sent a spattering a pink across his face at the desperately needed communion. A lilted exhale cascaded over his face. His eyes slid shut soaking in the warm fingers split between the cold sheet metal of the table. Another set of fingers carded through his hair, lightly scratching at his scalp. His sedated smile earned him a deep happy hum from across the table. The minutes ticked by with Cas caressing his hair, down his ears, and across his freshly shaved jawline. The up tempo swing of his heartbeat slowed as the nimble ministrations drew to a leisurely crawl.

A shrill cry yanked him across the room to retrieve the most sinister of tea ingredients. He filled the mug and returned the kettle to the other side of the stove. Cas let the water cool in his mug for a minute, gauging the temperature change with quick touches to the rough ceramic. Tempered smiles beamed in his direction while the tea steeped. They progressively lessened the closer the tea got to his lips.

“Did the honey go bad or something?” he asked eyeing the squeeze bottle.

He shook his head and stared into the center mass of his mug.

Did Cas loose his sense of taste in the trip back? Normally, he would heap at least one tablespoon of it into his cup then stir it with even satisfaction bounding about behind his eyes. With the first sip, he huffed with satisfaction, swirling the drink around his mouth before swallowing it like an aged scotch. The whole sight puzzled him, but exhaustion had a strange effect on people. As a human, Cas was vocally appreciative of food and drink in general, lacking the pickiness of a human with years of palate testing under their belts. As an angel with waning mojo, generously spiced food and sour beers held more pleasure for him beyond their individual components. This bland of a libation without the flavor punch of honey shouldn’t have elicited any reaction at all; a grateful compliment for the effort involved, maybe. This was gravely disconcerting. Maybe he was overreacting. 

Formulating a plan to get Cas back to his mojo’s equilibrium as soon as possible, he launched into its preliminary steps. “How about after you finish, you take a long hot shower? I gave the bathroom a pretty thorough scrub last week, so those shiny showerheads have guaranteed grade A water pressure.”

“Sounds good,” he agreed and returned his gaze to the teabag steeping in his mug.

No room in the bunker had ever been so thick with silence in the history of the Men of Letters. His fingers relived the texture of Cas’s skin against his in a recollected loop of need. Ears perked parsing out his breaths for hints of physical pain or discomfort. Concocting a gameplan for the next few days was well and good, but the hours between steps two and three were yet another unknown unknown. The stormy blues dodged and retreated his advances one too many times. The distance was growing again.

“After twelve days of coming up empty handed, Sam sent me out on a case. He offered to come with, but I told him to stay in case you came back. It couldn’t have been easy on him being the only person to bounce my frustration off of. I mean, we were both worried sick – part of me is still scared if I blink you’ll disappear again. But I…” he paused, surprised at his own candor. “Sam sent me on this cockamamie case in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Some art gallery owner said a specter tried to kill him and the night staff was too frightened to work alone. It was a family run business so they needed our particular brand of assistance – the free kind. So with Sam’s foot firmly up my ass, I loaded Baby up with enough salt rounds and iron to take out a theme park haunted mansion and headed out. Sam nearly chewed my head off when I came back to the bunker…”

Cas cocked an eyebrow and listened intently.

“On the drive out, my right hand kept feeling out along the seat for yours,” he recalled with a subdued frown.

Cas’s mouth opened to offer soothing placation and zipped back up as Dean waved his sad expression away.

“When I landed at the only bed and breakfast with an open room in town, I almost asked for a queen bed. A hundred other minor missteps were made that trip. Any one of them could have landed me in serious trouble. I turned my back to a troubled witness but barely caught the reflection of his knife held over me in a mirror with enough time to stop him. The gallery owner waxed poetic about a beloved spouse, but I never asked for cause of their passing. Spoiler alert: botched murder suicide. I was so wrapped up in getting there quickly, I didn’t clean my shotgun the night I landed and it jammed at the worst time. I mean, even on autopilot I almost got ganked twice in a scuffle with the man posing as the ghost of the gallery owner’s spouse. Anyway, when I came home to tell Sam about the sloppiest episode of a canine human detective super group tv show ever, he practically grounded me. And you know what. I deserved it… deserved worse. I was careless and distracted and… fuck. I kept imagining you walking back through that portal or whatever with me states away. Sam and I looked through every book we had on angels and ripples in time space we had, but I wasn’t doing enough. I wasn’t…”

The angel pulled his clenched fists into the hearth of his mug warmed hands urgently, frantic vexation seeping from his pores. “You did everything you could. I know you did.”

He shook his head obstinately. Although he held onto Cas’s firmly, his consternation pulled him out of his grasp. “It wasn’t enough.”

The angel pulled the captive hands towards him until Dean returned his gaze. “But you are.”

Dean looked as if his heart fell onto the kitchen floor spit shined out of nervous desperation.

“I’m back now, here in the bunker, with my family. No amount of haranguing yourself over which one of us brought me back with make that any less true.”

“But, Cas, this was because of me! It was my fault!”

The deep cut of his skeptical brow incited his guts to spiral in on themselves. “How?”

“Sam said your mojo was under too much stress. After the power from the raijyuu battery, our own personal fireworks, and you recalibrating your mojo wavelengths to me, you went ‘poof’.”

The angel’s brow settled into a constipated scrunch. “That’s… Oh.”

“Yeah, if I hadn’t… if I had taken it slower…”

The clear blue of Cas’s eyes sliced Dean’s yammering in half. “Enough.”

An anxious rope of energy wrapped around his lower abdomen and tightened, scattering fearful spikes around his gut. All he could do to cease his ramblings was bite his inner lip.

“Stringing together unfounded suppositions until you land on one that makes you the bad guy doesn’t help anyone. I don’t need to assign blame to get past this and you shouldn’t either. And what about me serving an idealized version of my vessel up on a platter makes you think I wanted to take things slower?”

Knowing full well Cas would just squash his objections, he squinted them out in Morse code.

The grip on his hand loosened and his stare fell into his reflection in the table. “When humans fall in love, the change is quick. The hours before you confess or see your love returned you’re lively, overly curious, all nerves. The moment after, you light up like fireflies against a midnight sky. You’re fragile but fearless, exposing yourselves to unknown horrors and overwhelming joy in equal measure. Before I fell, I never understood how elastic the human spirit was, especially in the throes of passion. The moment it ends, sometimes minutes or days before, that fearlessness plummets into a miasma so thick you shuffle off any sense of self-preservation, seeking out what pains you.”

“What does this have to do with…” Dean asked impatiently. Cas lifted his hand from Dean’s but Dean snatched it back and held his tongue.

It took a few words for his tone to return to less turbulent depths. “Angels are not so flexible. To change our minds, bend our hearts, it tears at our Grace. Our mission, our purpose is so integral to our being that willing it to change forces us to rejoin these tattered segments into different configurations. When other angels see my Grace, they see its unnatural curves and jagged edges where I question God’s plan, the uneven knots where my doubts have devoured that once perfect globe of conscienceless fortitude. They don’t see their reflections in it anymore. Yes Dean, you have changed me in every measure big and small on display for the world to see, but these changes are not so different than the changes you endure as a human in love.”

Even the way Cas let his confession fall from his lips so brazenly made Dean’s heart skip. “Your Grace is different… because of me?”

The angel’s face fell like he had denuded a secret part of himself. Castiel’s eyes skimmed the peripheral adornments of the room in the wake of his unintentional admission.

The limits of his perception as a being less divine than angel guaranteed he couldn’t know everything about Castiel. This terrible realization couldn’t change how Dean felt under his amorous gaze; he couldn’t see Grace unless Cas wanted him to. Even if he had, he knew the jagged edges would be a detail missed while kneeling in wondrous supplication of his divine nature. 

“A few bumps and bruises aren’t gonna keep me from lovin’ you, Cas,” he whispered at their joined hands. “Hell, I’m sure we gave each other a few over the years. But it doesn’t change me and you. We’re a team.”

Cas nodded meekly. His detached gaze unnerved Dean as he stood from the table and headed out of the kitchen. “I need to bathe.”

He clamored away from his seat, but didn’t follow him. “Yeah, good. I’ll just uh…”

By the time he spat out a response Cas was halfway down the hall.

Helplessness clawed at his ribs where hopeful relief should have rested in solitude. He clenched and released his fists trying to quell the anxious irritation. With a spotless kitchen, bathroom, and library, he searched for something to tidy up while biding time. His booted feet dragged him back to their room. Even during their separation it never stopped being their room. Sure, Cas had his spartan room close by, but after the raijyuu incident, they rarely spent the nights apart. Their bed was still neatly made from the morning with the extra blanket folded in quarters at its foot. Without the extra heat trapped under the blanket, he resorted to extra blankets to warm his feet. He toyed with returning it to the footlocker, but settled on tossing out old food containers and stacking the scattered notes on his desk. Sam had coerced him into eating on a few occasions by bringing him take out, often punctuated by small tins containing sweet pie slices. After the nearly botched hunt in Arkansas, regular meals were a luxury. He doubled down on examining the lore, as useless as it ended up being.

Sniffing out any more items out of place, he spotted the digital clock trundling time forward into the next hour. Surely Cas was done showering but then. Doomsdays scenarios projected against the inside of his skull sent him jogging back towards the bathroom to reassure himself. The rigid soles of his boots squeaked against the laminate flooring outside, but a lower octave yip snuck out from under the door. As soundlessly as he could manage, he crouched low and opened the door. The bathroom was large enough that the variance in air pressure didn’t change that much when the door was ferreted open, but Cas still had extraordinary perception. He closed the door behind him and strained his hearing. A sniff, hiccup, sigh, and the smallest bleat echoed across the shower stalls. His heart wracked against his ribcage; its slow strong pulse raced into a frantic palpitation. His fingers stretched out to collect the mournful angel several stalls away but halted when a delicate muttering sounded off of the tiled walls. It wasn’t English or Spanish or Enochian or Latin or Greek or any other language he remembered Cas speaking. For a reason he couldn’t nail down, it disturbed him even more. While he tried to transcribe the consonants and vowels into a configuration he could remember, Cas shut off the water and stepped out from under it.

He scrambled back into the hallway and back to their room. In this state there was no way he was going to remember that constellation of sounds perfectly, so he tore open his top desk drawer to find something to write what he could remember down on. Just as quickly, scribbled it, sent a picture of it to Sam, and shut the drawer in preparation of Cas’s return. After all, Dean had washed, folded, and carefully tucked away all of his clothes back where they belonged. He couldn’t very well walk around the bunker in just a towel, even though the concept improved almost any situation he could find them in. So he sat on top of the extra blanket at the foot of the bed and waited. Eventually his brother messaged back that it wasn’t an language he could quickly recognize, but would keep him updated.

No shower warmed love opened the door even ten minutes later. He climbed back onto his feet and headed back to the bathroom. The steam had cleared out. None of his clothes were in the hamper. Fright seeped into his gut once more. No longer concerned how stealthy he was, he jogged back down the hall to their room. Empty. Surely he couldn’t have missed him on the way back. Other areas of the bunker didn’t seem like likely destinations, but he checked the usual suspects, even startling his brother by tearing his door open. A wide-eyed mien greeted him, but he just grunted apologetically at him and closed his door once more. The floor squealed under his shoes as he trotted down the stairs into the cave. Again flicking the light switch on he found nothing. To his slight relief there was no evil cheerio either.

He doubled back to the bathroom door and followed the tickle of water outlining familiar heels. The half-moon circles led to the right further away from the other bedrooms to the last door to the left before the stairs leading down; Cas’s old room. He held his breath and opened the door a crack. It was too dark to see, so he entered the room leaving the door open to help illuminate inside. His right foot landed on soft damp mass beside the bed. There curled up on the bed laid the dark haired angel facing away from the door. The otherworldly clothes were balled up near his face. Only sheets remained on the bed since he relocated and he seemed to shiver under it. He gathered his extra blanket from the foot of the bed in their room and covered him up to the shoulders. His breathing was even despite the occasional shakes so climbing into his space would have only woken him, Dean reasoned. Although it tore at his insides, he tucked the dark green surplus blanket around him and vacated the room. The sonorous thick clunk of the door closing behind him spilled his writhing heart onto the floor. Whatever it was plaguing Cas, he wasn’t asking for help to fix it. The sober itch at his belly slowly curdled into a vague bitterness. None of this was right.


	12. The Melittologist in the Conservatory with a Lead Pipe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam ties Dean and Cas to the train tracks.

There was no doubt anymore. He was mending a broken heart. This rendition wasn’t how his brother or he had performed the thrall, not during their time with Cas anyway. After the initial novelty of excessive consumption wore off, he was partial to running farther and faster than was routine, exhausting himself into a state of inescapable reflection. When he came out on the other side, he would have fine-tuned his preferences and combed through the experience for a silver lining. The pinpricks of barren longing would hurt less over time. On the other hand, his brother was the king of tossing himself into the welter. The initial period of over consumption overcast every aspect of his life, most of the time confined to the four walls of a far off bar chosen to house that particular heartbreak. When the job pulled him back out from under a dark cloud of his own making, he wouldn’t visit that establishment again, seeming to leave his vulnerability with it. Sam knew it was his way of sweeping it under the table, but the drives back to his everyday life stretched out to hours and days longer than appropriate. Driving Baby nursed him back into the light of normalcy, shooing the stormy weather away as fast as he could push West. This rite however was performed ninety degrees in the opposite direction and at half speed.

He climbed up the stairs from the basement with a particular tome at hand. Something about what Gabriel had said about the other universes nagged at him. The great matriarch of dark magic herself wrote an entire volume on drawing their power through a myriad of dangerous means, but he theorized that those methodologies could help him glean an alternative path to bringing someone into theirs if the occasion arose again. Nearing the top set of stairs, he could hear the warm pops of a vinyl recording from the room at its summit. He checked the clock on his phone just to be sure. He was correct; Cas was still listening to records three hours before sunrise with his door half open. Against the foot of the bedframe, he leaned back sitting on the pillow with one of the military surplus blankets over his shoulders. A slow tempo ballad echoed into the passageway from the well maintained record player on the plastic crate past his feet. His dark eyelashes obscured a vapid gaze into the headphone’s padding in his limp grip. Unplugged they were of little use, but he focused on them like they held the key to a riddle repeating behind his eyes. The somber tones weren’t loud enough to disturb anyone, but as Sam passed Dean’s room, it became evident they weren’t the only echoes haunting his brother.

Dean’s bedroom light was still on, the door cracked open invitingly, he reclined with his arms crossed behind his head on top of his comforter absorbed in the music playing in a very similar set of headphones wearing down under Cas’s contemplative grasp. Their calm conflicted gazes were similar in a way, but Cas stared down into the floor while Dean kept his eyes locked on the ceiling. 

They had all become night howls at one point or another over the past two months. For Sam it started on that drive back from Rufus’s cabin, letting concern for his brother gnaw at his insides in a way that had almost become comfortable through so much repetition. For Dean it began the moment Cas was yanked from his arms, consumed by his mission to rescue the angel he had only recently painstakingly detangled from their din of mixed signals. Even after returning to his family, Cas’s feet never seemed to hit the ground. The strain to reclaim his center of gravity was evident by his constantly shifting feet or stares off into the far off distance of the ever present Bunker concrete walls well past the witching hour. They would be mid-conversation or eating meals all together when they would catch glimpses of his distracted mien. It wasn’t until they were in the cave again, he parsed a possible meaning. Cas would stare into the vacant space the dimensional dimple had scarred their space. What about that place had such allure?

How Dean and Cas walked around on eggshells around each other wasn’t word for word history repeating, but it was beginning to rhyme. His brother would offer to do various tasks well within Cas’s power just to be in his company. Even with his miniscule amount of Grace, his friend would offer to do too much, just to have something else to focus on. The living room and den couches hardly got a break with how common mid-afternoon naps had become. Dean’s pining wasn’t hampered by emotional constipation this time around, but he was less likely to ask his brother for a hand. Mirroring their history though, Sam couldn’t fight the urge to poke his nose in the beehive. He knocked on Dean’s doorframe and waved his arms to get his attention.

He pulled the headphones down and paused the music streaming from them. “What’s up, Sammy?”

“Can’t sleep?”

He dodged his scrutinizing stare by keeping his eyes on the comforter.

“Yeah, neither can I.” He closed the door behind him and invited himself to sit at the edge of the bed.

His attention skittered from his brother’s face to his checker socked feet in equal measure.

“Out with it, or I’m gonna convince him we need him to investigate a dead celebrity haunting on a coast by himself. You won’t even get to pick the celebrity or which coast.”

He smirked ruefully. “He’d love checking out a famous bee scientist’s murder, wouldn’t he?”

“A melittologist.”

“Gesundheit,” he snarked.

“I don’t imagine they get murdered under overly mysterious circumstances that often, but hey, we can dream, right?” he chuckled.

The levity in his tone thinned out quickly. “We just got him back and he’s spent the last week conked out or miles away.” He tilted his head to the side, smooshing the ear cup padding into his cheek. “Even when we watched that movie two nights ago he was excited about before he want ‘poof’ he couldn’t keep his eyes on the screen. He just shut me out. Wouldn’t even give me an ‘in’.”

“Did you ask him directly what’s wrong?”

“I tried, but he just dismisses it. I know he’s just tryin’ to keep me from worrying, but it’s backfiring.”

He weighed the options against each other before he gave an answer. 

His brother watched him carefully but stayed motionless, like the scale would fall directly on him when his choice was ultimately made.

“Well then, let’s look at the facts. Cas was trapped in a different world for months. He probably met new people, experienced new things – Let’s be honest here- probably had a new life. All of the sudden he gets zapped back here without warning to the same old problems. It wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibilities that he left some good things behind.”

“Better than us?” Sitting straight up, he grated against the idea. “Better than his family?”

“I don’t know, Dean. Think about it though. When we got out we didn’t have to think about all the evil bullshit lurking in the shadows every god damned day anymore. We had hobbies and families and barbeques to attend. Maybe he got a taste of that, too.”

A telltale squint drilled into him before he could backpedal into a less rosy possibility.

“You’re sayin’ he’s mopping because he misses that place? He’s been sleeping all day and up all night staring at the wall because he’s disappointed to be back home?” he snarled almost defeated by the thought.

“I don’t know for sure, but neither do you. We gotta be patient with him. He’ll open up eventually.”

He ripped the headphones from his neck and shot up from the bed. “No, Sam. I’m out of patience. I’ve waited long enough! We searched high and low for him for weeks! He pops back up and skulks around here like a…” his words crammed back into his throat like a slow motion wreck in reverse and his eyes widened.

Sam looked up at him and swallowed. Were his directions leading to the cul-de-sac of clarity that easy read?

“He hates it here now. God, he wants to leave again.” The whites of his eyes widened as his irises ping ponged back and forth frantically.

Sam rose to his feet and clamped his palms onto his brother’s shoulders, pushing his side of the conversational seesaw back down to reality. “No, Dean. That’s not it. He just… Look, take a minute to clear your head.” Dean shifted on his feet and dodged his pointed stares until Sam hunched back so his face would appear in his sightline and continued, “Then you go talk to him. Like you said, he’s in his room staring at the wall, probably just as miserable as you are. Just hear him out if he wants to talk. If not, hey, you can try again tomorrow.”

He skated past his penetrating stare tabulating the invisible risk. The anger escaped through concerted exhales. “Fine. If not, I just don’t know how we get past this.”

“It’s this or East Coast scientist ghost busting,” he joked and released him.

His brother smirked for a brief second then returned to sit at the edge of the bed pensively.

Back in the sanctuary of his room, Sam rubbed his hands over his face in a faulty attempt to sooth the agitation off of it. There were plenty of rooms, but his was still close enough to theirs that he would be able to hear future escalating shouts without much difficulty. He took up his own headphones and waited for the squall to blow past him.

===============

If his Cas related worries were charted on the clock face, at least one of them rang true almost every hour these days. At least when it came to this he had to think the old saying about broken clocks proved correct. Most of the scenarios he worried about were bullshit, of course, but they had been through the death and rebirth of terrifying possibilities one too many times to ignore their flights of fancy. There, standing sentry right out of view from Cas’s door, he hoped that the hour hand wasn’t the over one of the more bombastic, worrisome hour markings. The handful of strides that would carry him into the angel’s vicinity were the trial they’d trained for their whole relationship. Lesser misunderstandings and misconceptions had come to blows. Being a universe apart felt less harrowing than that distance; fearing rejection and letting it wrack his bones like the rallying toll of a bass drum.

A small hum lifted into a higher octave than the accompanying melody then ventured down a half beat as the song dictated. His feet strummed along into clear view of the cold linoleum floor bound angel. Guileless footfalls drew the angel’s attention up to Dean’s tense gaze. “Hello, Dean.”

“Um, hey, Cas. What cha listening to?” he asked crouching down to slouch near him. The frigid temperature of the hard floor seeped into his skin immediately making him regretted the decision.

“I’m not sure. One in the stack, I suppose,” he said, the resignation clear in his tone.

Judging by the height of the selection closest to the player, he had already listened to over half of his current pile. More than the day before, he guessed. “If you’re not really listening to ‘em, then why play ‘em at all?”

“I had a song in my head a few days ago. It was upbeat, jovial even, but the lyrics were somber. The singer was a bass and the band used at least four instruments. Being most of music I listened to was in your car or from the Men of Letters archives, I was sure I could rediscover it, commit the song’s name to memory this time,” he said with a quite resolve.

“What about the download you got from Metatron? Could it have come from there?”

The blanket fell from his shoulders as he readjusted his posture. By the way he shifted uncomfortably, it was apparent his Grace couldn’t have filled a thimble. His vessel must have been feeling those inconvenient human aches, but he kept it to himself for some reason this time. Mild squints eked out, but smoothed into a miniscule pout. “No, it was far more recent.”

“Could it have been when you were away?” he punctuated the last world with a head tilt in the direction of the cave. Broaching the topic this way felt a lot less forced than the way he had practiced it in his head.

“It’s entirely possible,” he surmised. Fiddling with the finishing at the corner of the blanket busied his hands as soon as the topic ballooned between them. “I spent a lot of time there listening to vinyl.”

“Anything I would know?” The urge to accommodate the expanding uneasiness by scooting back plucked at his keys. Fortunately, Cas’s movements gave him enough room to settle in beside him with his back against the bedframe. He gave him a couple of inches, telling himself he didn’t want to force contact before he was comfortable. In truth, he didn’t know if he could reel himself back even if it was the right thing to do. They had been apart for too long and abnormally distant for what felt like even longer.

The whirling disc kept his focus. “Some songs, some singers, even fragments reminded me of songs I knew from here. Others were completely new. The concept was incredibly irritating at first, but it helped with listening comprehension.”

“Sam had mentioned something about that. I supposed without your mojo you had to do everything the hard way.”

“Reading, writing, cooking that involved more than three steps, how to get dessert stains out of a carpet; everyday was something new,” he recalled wistfully.

He studied his face for any glint of sarcasm. “You travelled halfway across the universe and someone made you their butler?” 

The chuckle that escaped from Cas’s lips for the first time in forever struck sparks of guarded joy across his belly. “Not exactly. I was staying with someone who worked during the day. I had to help out in some way. He was taking a big risk protect…” he stumbled as his mind caught up with his words.

“Who was protecting you? From what?” he prodded at the point immediately, but with a calmer tone than he thought he could muster.

His top teeth gnawed at his bottom lip, quelling a contumacious thought from his mind. Finally his eyes slid over to Dean’s face. “An FBI agent. He witnessed me fall from the sky.”

“Why would an FBI agent shelter you? Wouldn’t locking an angel up for nefarious Area 51 style testing be top on their list?” He angled towards him and rested his head against the side of the bed.

“He didn’t know what I was at first. Since I couldn’t speak and I appeared to be injured at the scene of an accident he brought me to a hospital. I was there for some time.”

“Hmmm, were you that hurt after the fall?” He took up his own corner of the blanket to fidget with.

He ran a hand through his tussled dark hair and nodded. “My remaining Grace was depleted trying to slow my fall. I had to allow my body to repair itself the hard way. I have been in worse pain, though.”

His effort to subdue his concern fell flat as it still gathered on his knitted brow. “Once you were out of the hospital, did it just take that long to gather enough mojo to come back?”

“No, I happened across this,” he pointed at the pendant nestled under Dean’s shirt. “You see, the agent had it, too. Somehow it housed enough Grace to send me back. I was astonished that I was oblivious to an artifact containing that much power in my immediate vicinity for so long.”

“You go treasure hunting though his stuff, too?” he smirked knowingly.

“That’s how I found the record player. He had shelves and shelves of books, but I wasn’t adept enough at reading to get through anything that long. Oh, he did have a large television though. We watched many films, even a documentary about earth borrowing bees.” The memories lit up his face as he plucked them out of the air. “On less hectic days, he brought home take out and or a pastry and we took turns picking things to watch. He liked a lot of the same things you do: campy horror, over the top dramas, big production fantasies. On the hard days, I would attempt a new recipe and he would tell me what he thought of it. Due to my being safer indoors, we only went as far as the backyard on sunny days. We talked about going for runs together around the neighborhood, but never really got around to it.” The last notion soured on his face.

“Wait, ‘talked’? You said you couldn’t.”

His head fell back against the edge of the bed in silence. He waited for a piano solo to end as Dean chewed at the inside of his lips waiting. “We communicated nonverbally.”

“Like ASL or something?” he signed the word for ‘hello’ Sam had taught him.

“Not at all, but nonverbal cues did help especially when conversing with his coworker. Anyway, it was calm for the most part. He lived in a quiet neighborhood outside of DC. Only the maliciousness of man against man stood in the way of the contentment we found.”

He eyed him skeptically, but he didn’t push. “No big car chases or bank heists, huh? Didn’t run into any monsters on the other side, either?”

“There was no magic there, nothing supernatural anyway. At least until I touched the amulet, then I could feel Angels appearing all over the globe. Hundreds, maybe thousands just sprang into being. That’s why I couldn’t leave the moment I regained my Grace. I had to tell him to look out for them and to find the other one.” This admission stole the wind from Cas’s sails, like he was tensing for a low blow.

“This is the part where I ask ‘which other one’, right?” When no answer came, he leeched the levity out of his tone. “Which other one, Cas?”

“The other Castiel.”

Lead footed realization stomped holes into the imagined cookie cutter suburban life Cas detailed for him. “So there were copies of Angels there: a Gabriel and a Balthazar to muck with that world. I can imagine baby angels running amuck would cause a problem or two. You think this FBI agent is up to the task?”

“I can’t say,” he started to clam up again.

“What about copies of humans and Nephilim? Other varieties of angels?”

A small warmth poked holes in his quickly starching walls. “I am not sure, but Jack was there.”

He smiled broadly. “Oh, yeah? How was our boy?”

“I am certain he was good. I didn’t meet him, but the agent did. He ran a little diner Kelly started up. She passed unfortunately. Jack took a lot of pride in the fruit tarte he sold the agent the day he happened across his shop. It was indeed delicious. I forgot how pleasing kiwi is with custard.”

“Good to know the other side treated some of us well. Hey, was anyone else we know there? Man, I can’t wait to tell someone you met their evil alternative universe twin. Cough it up, Cas.”

“Ketch was the agent’s partner. He actually tried to get me committed to an asylum. I think he had unspoken affections for the agent, but he never hinted at it himself. Ultimately I subdued him for trying to kill the people I cared about ‘on the other side’, as you called it.”

“Well, he always was a dick. Did everyone make it out safe?”

“I believe so. He shot Davies, but not mortally. I would have healed him, but didn’t have enough Grace to heal him, the agent, and return. His boyfriend was there when it happened. I am confident he handled it efficiently.”

“Boyfriend, huh?” He purred inwardly a bit at the salacious detail. “Who had the honor of being the bangers to his mash?”

Cas pushed his lips out in thought then divulged, “Sam.”

“Sam? Like Sammy, Sammy?”

He nodded with a sly smile. “The only time I saw them together was during the altercation, so I can’t say much about their dynamic.”

“They did hit it off faster than I thought possible on this side,” he mused. “Kinda sounds like how it was for you and the agent.”

A peculiar hitch rumbled through his shoulders like the shirt he wore itched at the sunburn beneath. “Our link made trusting each other easy. You don’t invite someone else into your mind without doubt, but it was the only way to converse complicated concepts like, ‘Angel of the Lord’ and ‘vessel’. Once we were joined the first time, it occurred to me how cumbersome my interactions with humanity had been trying to shove Enochian ideas into human vocabulary.”

“Trust like that doesn’t come easy,” he refuted halfheartedly.

“Indeed,” he said. The twitching blanket between his fingers stalled. “After the second or third time in our tether, my Grace reached out to him even without forethought. Imagine my amazement the first time he reached out to me.”

“Wait, he angel walkie-talkied you? But he wasn’t an angel, right?”

“Just human. Our link became stronger even though I was frightened of its capabilities in my weakened state. Who knows what he could have found rummaging around in my consciousness if I wasn’t constantly vigilant. He could have damaged himself, so I tried to shut him out for a while. When I wouldn’t allow it, he respected the decision. He would patiently wait me out,” he smiled staring off into the echoing harmonics. “In the meantime, we grew closer, physically.”

Every fiber in his core bristled even as his heart pounded, sweating out refusal. But this was the truth he asked for, right?

His true blues took stock of him. They found enough sturdiness to continue. “The agent started to hold and touch me more, like the information he wanted to impart between words could pass through our skin. His curiosity and unexplainable faith in me drew me to him. Such strength and kindness inspired me to action on days I could hardly garner the energy to get out of bed.”

The blood flushed from his features down to his extremities. His body told him to turn, but his mind was too stubborn to leave without sating its sadistic curiosity.

He cleared his throat and paused. “Dean, I didn’t think I could ever feel that way again. It tore at me, but I responded to his affection.”

“Stop!” he shouted curtly.

“Dean…” he said and reached for his hand.

He pulled his hand out of reach and looked away. “I was out of my head worrying if you’d ever come back to me. I couldn’t sleep or eat, fuckin’ terrified you left me forever, again. And you go fall in love with some guy whose name you can’t even say of in front of me!”

He pulled the blanket back onto his shoulders and clenched at its bulk, shrouding himself in the only armor within reach. His dark mop hunched down, yet his eyes remained inert, analyzing.

“What was this knight in shining armor’s name, Cas?” He shot to his feet, even if it was just to give him enough leverage to self-servingly lord over him. His silence plucked at every nerve in his body capable of hurt and annoyance at once. “Who was this perfect specimen capable of wooing an Angel of the Lord in a freakin’ fortnight?”

After a ghastly length of time, Dean started to shout again right as Cas muttered out an answer. He couldn’t hear him so he asked for an encore. 

“Dean Winchester, you asshat!” He plucked his head up and shouted back. “If you had let me finish,” he shambled out of his blanket and strode into his space with his back up. “I was trying to tell you, I fell for you! Again! Our bond was so strong that we could link up without Grace because he was one of you!”

His jaw opened and closed a couple of times like a startled goldfish. He uselessly reached for anything to keep himself steady, but resorted to clinching his fists ready at his sides. “Me?”

“A version of you, one who I constantly compared to you in hundreds of ways. But I could never have dreamt up the impossibility of him. You, him, identical but vastly different all at once. He was your mirror image from far away. The closer we became, the more he splintered off from you,” his voice lost its irate edge. “In the beginning, I thought he was you if the world hadn’t crashed around your ears so young. As the days passed by, I learned how open and yielding he was in his affection for his closest allies. All of his facets made me reflect on you, our world, our family through a different lens. So unguarded, secure, and erudite… so softly he opened himself to me, gave me everything…”

His guts clenched the longer he chased this illusive rambling. Each sentiment stomping harder and harder on the delicate chambers from which he poured his love into Cas. “Please, Cas. I can’t listen to this…”

The angel approached him and took hold of his face by the cheeks. Dean tried to stumble backwards out of his grasp, arms flailing hopelessly. Failing to twist his face out of his grasp, he closed his eyes gasping in frustrated puffs of air in consternation. His whole face was so heated from struggle that Cas’s hands chilled him unpleasantly. “No, stop!”

Stern palms kept him still even after his will to fight waned. “Dean, you’re not…”

“I’m beggin’ you, Cas. Don’t make me hear this,” his labored huffs slid into ruined half formed murmurs.

He hushed him carefully and pet the side of his face until his cracked voice box relented. Guiding his breaths to a slower pace, Cas inhaled deliberately and exhaled his own hot breath down his shirt, making his chest flutter unexpectedly. “He gave me everything he could: security, careful consideration at every turn, humor, a rich home life, and bottomless love. But without my family, my friends, and the reckless, ornery, captivating, unflinching loyal you, I was not enough.”

A winded inhaled shook him at the admission. His fingers curled around Cas’s and he found the strength to open his eyes. There his face hovered inches away gazing into his eyes with a tender, patient smile, waiting for permission. Ardent affections wafted from the angels adoring smile almost throwing Dean backwards to bask in its power more clearly. Dean wanted to believe with the truth finally out, they would sync right back up, lift their hearts from the dusky swamp back into the cloudless joy they once resided in. Of course reality was too hard to wrestle, too battle hardened to concede at so forthright a confession. This is what Sam was warning him about. How long had he known?

“I will always return to you, Dean.” He relinquished his hold on the hunter’s face to rest a palm on his trumpeting heart. “I apologize that it took me so long to come home.”

“I still can’t say I truly understand what is happening with you since you got back, but I’m so fuckin’ thankful you’re here,” he said in a brusque tired tone. 

Boiling blood rushed out of his head, flooding his entire system with relief. If he were completely honest with himself, the confession left him uncomfortable in his own skin, jealous of a carbon copy of himself for having a life with Cas he would never know. A rusted territorial hook sunk into his gut as he recalled that the other Dean’s yielded to Cas. Of course Cas wanted someone self-actualized and confidently in control of all aspects of his life. The grass was greener, but Cas had a taste and still tore through space time to return to his side. Repeating that fact over and over wasn’t comforting him the way he begged it to be. Deep in his core a sensual progression plucked out a heady melody imagining his angel sweat stained and lasciviously grinding out echoing pleasures underneath another man. That other man inhabiting such a familiar skin added a complex wrinkle, but didn’t dull the arousal. The overwhelming need for physical affirmation overmastered him. Their interlaced digits satiated the pinching drive for skin on skin contact into a blunt pressure, giving him enough mental dexterity to navigate the conversation away from the cumbersome existential implications of many thems in many universes for only one Chuck to fuck with like worthless action figures in a backyard mud pit. “I know it’s late and we both could use the four or eight hours, but I have a couple questions. Though I know my timing to god awful…”

Tangled digits squeezed tenuously and he shook his head, sending his apprehension into the far distance.

“When you were with ‘the agent’,” he found the vernacular uncomfortable, but far less unwieldy than ‘the other me’. “You said he gave you everything. I’m gonna need a track list.” His eyebrows wiggled obnoxiously even though his tone was clearheaded.

A versed eye roll crested over Cas’s face despite a measured smile neutralizing its venom. “Well, in our first encounter, or shall I call it ‘track one’, I gripped us in one hand and stroked us into orgasm,” he recalled as if he were reciting a quick run grocery list. “Track two through seven or so, we held each other close and used his various toys which was quite a lot of fun. Around track eight, he led me to the brink with his talented mouth. Then in track nine, he taught me the immense delights of anal sex with a side of teacher roleplay. We made sure he was prepped thoroughly and endured no discomfort. It was all very… informative.”

Somewhere in the middle of explanation, a fuse popped so loudly between his ears he was surprised Cas hadn’t paused to lift his lower jaw back into its neutral position. While he was still flummoxed and achingly jealous, deeply penetrating photos unreeled in his mind. He nearly palmed himself in search of relief. “Shit, that sounds like quite the sexy album. Pretty lengthy, too.”

His temperate smile skittered into a half chuckle. “Don’t worry, Dean. I’m sure there are plenty of excellent songs on the B side.”

One strong pleasant tingle zipped up his spine nearly bugging his eyes out of his head, but Cas made no effort to close their distance. Their long separation made his flesh needy, prickling at his close proximity. Disappointingly, he turned back to the abandoned record player and the mountainous physical track list. “Why don’t you go to bed? I will be up a bit longer.”

Every bone in his body quaked for the angel, craved his nearness like the last inch between opposing magnets. Nothing about his posture mirrored that sentiment in return. His focus drawn in the other direction hunched over the pile of black discs in colorful cardboard sleeves. 

He assured himself that he understood. He really did. Breakups were exhaustive amorphous endeavors. Even though he aimed to never break his own heart by affording himself a serious relationship again, in the handful of occasions he fell out of someone’s heart, he found the way back to the normalcy through someone else’s bedding. It wasn’t fair to begrudge Cas his own methods, even if the distance chafed him. “A’right. Come to bed whenever you want,” he offered.

The needle found its groove again, leaving him with only a lazy bouncing melody.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading the story so far. The ending is written, but I have to chop the ridiculously long last chapters into pieces and edit them into submission.  
> If you want to follow me @OssuYaoiReview on Twitter and Instagram, I post MxM comic/manga micro-reviews there. If you want notifications for my fics, I also post story headers on the Insta when I complete them, or you can subscribe here on AO3 to never miss a chapter.


	13. Echoes in the Corridor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam hatches a plan that puts Dean in a new headspace.

The car creeper Dean first bought for the garage was on its last legs. It’s not that he was particularly rough on it, but in hindsight wildly tossing it at the interior walls a time or two hadn’t helped its longevity any. The impetus to replace it nagged at him now that the bottom right wheel squeaked pathetically whenever he tried to roll out in a straight line. 

Changing the oil in these majestic feats of 50’s automotive engineering was meditative at this point. Like Sam’s morning runs, the basic steps resembled each other no matter the model so he could phase out of everyday consciousness even while his rolled up sleeves knocked against their innards. Like clockwork, his boots dragged him down to their orderly garage when there was heavenly mischief afoot. Clamoring metal and metal dings and strikes could drowned out his consternation, distract him from the complex evils of their world for an hour or two. Only once all the cars were serviced he would permit himself to be dragged back. This time, it was his own tantrums drawing him away from the garage. The fragile creeper wheel cracked away from the square frame leaving him to wiggle his way off and scoot legs first from under the red and white Studebaker Sky Hawk. Annoyed more at himself than the bum wheel, he yanked it out from under the car and aimed it righteously at the stoic blue wall. The shriek of worn out sneakers stopped his hurl short.

“Woah, what did the wheelie-majig do to you?” his brother asked more amused than concerned. Just in case, he drew his arms up to block the cart in case any sudden movements would draw his ire. It wouldn’t be the first time one of Dean’s moods doled out welts of collateral damage.

He grunted distractedly and dropped it on the floor in frustration. “Whad’ya want?”

“Get this, I was going through the second storage room since we rebuilt the shelving and found something you’d really like,” he offered with a giddy smile.

He was still incredibly suspicious, but followed him clear across the bunker as he prattled on about their updated cataloging efforts. This box led to that box and this was one was mislabeled but… honestly he was half paying attention, more worried about smearing the motor oil off his hands and onto his oldest pair of jeans. The reorganization project was Sam’s brainchild after all. Once in a blue moon he was tapped to move endless long file boxes or unwrap powerful artifacts, but never involved himself in the nitty gritty of the cataloging process. They approached the open door to the sterile looking subbasement room. Replacing its light fixtures and refreshing their bulbs changed the feel of the room altogether. The shelves were arranged in stack style U configuration around a long metal table at the front of the room. The husks of eight or so distended boxes were heaped under the far side of the table with their contents spread out across the tabletop neatly folded in short uniform heaps. Dean’s jaw dropped. “What are we looking at, Sammy?”

“Witness accounts describe the Men of Letters as the titular Men in Black, right? Well clearly they had a lot more than one uniform,” he explained smugly.

In each pile was a disguise tailored for every kind of espionage mission: firemen, police officer, doctor, priest, color guard, metal worker, foreign military fatigues, formal suits with starch white collared shirts, housecoat and silk pajamas, even lace undergarments of a suspiciously larger size. Every fiber of his being wanted to fist bump the air as an excited tingle threaded from his toes to the top of his head. On the outside, he only adopted a dopey grin feeling the course weave of a brown jacket against his fingertips at the edge of the table. “We’re gonna need a bigger closet.”

His brother cast him a chastising look that softened as he followed Dean’s hands from one costume to the next. “Yeah, this is only half of it,” he pointed at the boxes lining the lowest shelf behind them, some of them in as bad of shape as the ones by their feet. “I thought we could get some of those metal racks and hang them all up. You know, air them out. Some of them are too damaged after being down here for so long. We’ll have to go through them and toss what’s too far gone.”

The majority of what was on the table appeared unworn or neatly mended, like the Men of Letters had their own tailor on retainer. “I will clear out a bedroom and put in a better long term solution for storage than some flimsy racks,” he said mapping out schematics for a huge walk in closet in a bedroom close to his. Never know how quickly you’ll need to cape up for a mission, he mused.

They ruminated on how several of the get-ups would have made their identities for some of their previous gigs far more convincing. It’s not like an identity could always be faked with a monogramed trucker hat and an equally fake ID as much as they tested their luck with that combination. Midway through unboxing an elaborate collegiate costume Sam lit up like it was a strawberry pancake Saturday and darted off to the far shelf rummaging for some particular curiosity. The last weary box practically self destructed in a puff of pale green dust as he dropped it on the top of the shortest pile to popped off the lid. The older hunter’s view of the label on the front was obscured by his towering brother, so he crossed his arms and waited. “You got something you wanna share with the rest of the class?”

The snide raise of his eyebrow and white canines did little to put him at ease. “I thought you would find this one useful.” Sam lifted a three piece suit sandwiched between two long evening gowns out and placed in his brother’s quickly outstretched hands.

“I have a few suits that smell way less like moth balls, Sammy.”

The moment a shining shield found its way into the top of the pile his mouth went dry. “We… we already have fake badges. I don’t need…”

“Look,” he leaned a hip against the long side of the table and loosely crossed his arms. “This holding pattern you guys are in is starting to feel familiar,” he hushed his brother reprovingly and chugged through. “I know he’s going through a rough patch, but he’s been home for two weeks and not once in that time have I seen you two in the same room for more than thirty seconds without one or both of you bolting in the opposite direction.” His tone melted into pillowy concern. “He told me what happened to him. Not every little detail, but enough. I’m just trying to nudge you in the right direction.”

Accusatory squints seeped from his face. “So, what, you want me to play dress up while I play therapist?” He dropped the costume back onto the stack and tightly crossed his arms over his chest. “Nuh uh.”

“Dean,” he pleaded relaxing his arms away from his core. “I know this kind of thing isn’t your strong suit, but Cas needs this! I want him back at baseline. You sure as hell want him back, like all the way back. What harm is suiting up like we would for any case and being what he needs in the moment? If pretending you’re him and talking it out would ease his suffering, why wouldn’t you?”

He had a point but he couldn’t concede, couldn’t look into his eyes and tell him how wrong it would feel to string Cas along like that. They were all intimately aware of how unmoored Dean was from confronting his emotional baggage. Sam must have conveniently left out the large red ‘H’ he would have to wear on his chest for ‘hypocrite’. A dim twinge lanced at his side as he remembered how patiently Cas would selflessly listen to him dip a toe into that festering pool in vulnerable moments. In turn, Dean gave Cas his undivided when pregnant pauses would spill into bouts of self-loathing over fights with one siblings or another. Would Cas do something like this for him? Absolutely, as sure as he felt his resolute heartbeats thump into his back as he held him in the blackest hour of night. Would Sam even have to ask Cas for that kind of help? Well, that bit was questionable. He was a bit oblivious at times, being relatively new to his humanity.

“I don’t even know where to start,” he lamented. Fiddling with the hem of the jacket didn’t clarify matters. “What if… what if he prefers him over me? What if this just makes him feel worse?”

He smirked, “You clearly can’t see how he looks at you, then. Even with you two recently turning tail from each other he still looks happier when he’s next to you. Just nervous maybe, from what I can tell. Exorcising those nerves might be just the thing. The point is you gotta get caught trying.”

His tongue ran against the back of his teeth in thought. If the angel could zip back to the bunker faster than the speed of light just to mope in his vicinity, then he could make the uncomfortable mental leap into his facsimile’s psyche in return, right? Surely a well-adjusted government shill wasn’t a bridge too far. The starchy suit found its way into his arms again. A resigned sigh spilled from his lips.

Sam smiled proudly at him. He pushed himself away from the table and opened his arms as if to pull him in.

At mach speed he reversed into the hallway and jogged onto the main floor. He refused to give his brother the satisfaction, even if he annoyingly proved himself right.

===============

It continued in shaky waves not six feet from him. Offbeat slow dance steps tapped out puzzling hesitance which could only be decoded once the door opened. Even before his familiar footsteps harmonized with the half decade old recording of a lax jazz quartet playing soulfully around him, there was no mistaking who it was. Some quality of those steps was different though. No extra weight compounded their volume like a carried load. It couldn’t be a restrained posture like he was balancing something or injured either. The intrigue forced his hand to move the needle up and away, to turn the device off entirely, preparing for the long awaited knock. The two complimentary shadows bobbed about the crack under the door.

He claimed his well-worn spot on the foot of the bed and swiveled to face the amorphous shadows. As the minutes ticked on, he cataloged the albums he listened to that day between small easy prep meals he snagged while both brothers were otherwise indisposed. Over the past couple of months he ushered dozens of recipes into his cooking repertoire. Hopefully he would get the chance to prove competent at a handful of them if he could only shake the dark cloud hanging over him.

Shave-and-a-haircut tapped out on the door. The odd sounding feet stepped backward and fabric wrinkled softly with it. He pushed off of the mattress, feeling the ache of his prolonged hard floor meditation. The opening door wafted a peculiar richly spiced cologne right at him.

The hunter stood ramrod straight with his hand in his jacket’s inner pocket as if to check for an out of sight secret. His hair was styled cleanly, parted to the side like how he wore his own hair while in more formal disguise. Freshly shaven, his demeanor carried notes of unwavering professionalism. His dark blue jacket seemed to wear him, running a size too large over high-waist matching pants. The starch collared white button up shirt also appeared to be a struggle, chocking him even with the top button undone behind his plain jane tie. Looking down he spotted the source of the peculiar footfalls: a pair of black monk buckle shoes strapped to his feet. As if shipwrecked on a timeless shore, he pivoted his weight from one foot to another and cleared his throat. “May I come in, Castiel?”

“Is this some practical joke?” he asked standing firm with a minor head tilt under the doorframe.

He shook his head, not one hair falling out of place. “I have official business to discuss.”

“Official?” he asked guarded and skeptical.

The nervous stammering steps pulled him forward, his hand dodging into his breast pocket once more. Minute beads of sweat gathered at his temples. His irises juked from into the room to descend directly into Cas’s. After a long constipated grunt, he straightened his posture, his resolve hardening. A spit-shined gold colored metallic badge flipped out from under its black leather cover, the profile of a proud eagle crying out from its peak. “I am agent Winchester with the FBI. I have a few questions concerning an urgent matter.”

His mood instantly soured. This was the worst joke in the long storied history of Winchester antics, worse than all the hotel toilet eruptions combined. His grip on the door tightened. “No.”

He dug in his heels, sweat still mercilessly gathering. “Please, sir. I promise not to overstay my welcome.” His charming toothy smile swung for the outfield.

Whatever boyish prank he had in mind, they usually didn’t take that long to unfurl. Riding it out would be less trouble than shutting him out completely and he and hours to go until he passed out numb yet overstimulated. With a half step to the side, he made no effort to diminish his eye roll. “Guess I can’t stop a lawman as determined as you.”

Dean surveyed his barren room as if his voice had never echoed from its corners. He gestured towards the bed and took up his own spot at the edge of the mattress. His eyes followed Cas as he plunked down a foot or so from him. The soft concern hidden there chinked at the armor rectified in the judgmental glint of his glare. He cleared his throat and tested the waters. “First off, I want this conversation to be as open and honest as you feel comfortable with. In that vein of honesty, this is more of a personal matter than an official one.”

“So you are asking for honesty when the first thing you told me was a lie?” he asked plainly.

“I do work for the government,” he smiled widely.

The conversation was already grating on his thinning patience. “What’s your question, agent?”

The laser focus he previously possessed began to pull apart as his eyes pivoted from one point room to another. A clarifying exhale cemented it back in place. “Before you left, you sent me on the hunt for more of your kind. What were you hoping I find?”

All available oxygen whisked out of the room. This was a joke, the cruelest, most malicious, most perverse proposition. He should have slammed the door shut as soon as he saw that ridiculous badge. But would Dean do this to him only to twist the knife? No, this was… there had to be some other meaning behind it. His heart hammered in his chest, the exposed nerve at the tip of his withered Grace unwittingly climbed out to his companion’s soul, fondling at its inert light for a port of entry.

“In these weeks, I haven’t found any angels, haven’t found the other you. Where am I supposed to look?” he spewed through tight lips.

He cast sideways glances at his profile, but relented, his Grace gaining no purchase on its prize. “I doubt you’ve come up that empty handed. You know my vessel’s name. You work for the FBI and have Charlie at your disposal.”

“Charlie?” he smiled with pleasant surprise.

“Yes. With a genius at your side, I’m sure you found him by this point. He’ll guide you just as I have attempted to.”

A distilled vacillation overtook him, sending a tremor out from his soul. The tendril darted for its epicenter instantly. Dean scrutinized his face, his breathing escalating, taking a couple of minutes to resolve. Had he felt its yearning? Sensed it waiting at his iron clad locked door without a keyhole to peek through?

“How have you been since you returned?” the agent’s imitation asked softly.

Dean’s calculus started to show its work. This was all a show, but not to entertain or pry. Immediately his will to argue, to reserve his inner monologue faltered. “Honestly speaking,” he began, registering Dean’s face regain a subtle calm. “It has been exhausting. Memories of our morning coffee, our late dinners, the comfortable nights we would curl up on the couch and watch movies together, they all give me great joy and now tremendous sorrow. My family has made efforts to help me through this hapless defeated feeling that stalks me day in day out. My diminished Grace has left me just as tired as I was after the fall, but on this side I dream.”

“What do you dream about, Cas..tiel?” he stammered awkwardly.

An acrid smirk washed over his face. “You stopped calling me Castiel pretty quickly. No need to be so formal, agent. I dream about a lot of things. The sensory information I took in on your side clings to my memory, so I’ve dreamt about the things we said we wanted to do together: visit a bakery, run through the neighborhood dressed in your sweats, plant trees in our small backyard,” he recalled wistfully. “Other things.”

Dean angled himself towards him, closing some distance by design. “What other things?”

“Last night, I dreamt I fell again,” he admitted listlessly.

Dean’s back stiffened. His palms ventured to his knees and braced his shoulders back like unintentional scaffolding. Regrets piled onto each other even before he spoke, testing its durability immediately.

”It wasn’t the same as my previous falls. Then again, dreams are never representative of the actual lived experience. This time I wasn’t left to fend for myself or hospitalized, alone, or confused. There was a man just like Jimmy. Seeking meaning after a family tragedy, he was damaged by his religion instead of strengthened by it. After spurning a trusted priest, he drifted away from the church and his family alike. All his turmoil pulled inward with no outlet, so he gave up hope. Once back on my feet, I found him, let him find strength in me. His faith was so corrupted, he didn’t even believe in my true nature. Like many humans, he only believed when I could offer proof.”

“How did you prove you were an Angel without your Grace?” He relaxed his elbows and hunched slightly forward.

“Once he found his sister hiding at the corner of the yard, staring up at the birds flying overhead. When he approached her, she was trembling, fingers frigid to the touch. He and his brother made a promise they would protect her from their mother’s wrath. You see, they knew she was disciplined more harshly that the other children. Their other brothers just accepted it, compounding the problematic family dynamic, even piling their own vitriol onto their mother’s harsh criticisms. I told him the reason why his mother chose to be so cruel to her own flesh and blood. Once he could lay that to rest, he offered up his vessel to me.”

“Wait, you don’t need a body when you fall. You have your own. Why would he offer it to you?”

“I am not very practiced at dreaming let alone deciphering their meanings. Nor am I confident a psychologist would interpret it in any sort of helpful way,” he smiled.

At least he was making light of such a depressing dream. “Look, I’m really sorry you fell into my world, but I’m glad I happened to be there to break your fall. It sounds like this time what happened after your landing was more pleasant, relatively speaking.”

His head bobbed from side to side as if weighing each instance against each other. “They each had their merits. I must say the biggest positive in each column is that you, Dean Winchester, came to my aid.”

He hung his head and replied, “That other Dean didn’t help out fast enough. He couldn’t shelter you when you needed it the most.”

“Dean…” he introjected but was rolled over by downhill self-deprecation.

“At least I gave you a warm, safe home,” he recalled and curled in on himself. “You wanted for nothing at all. We cooked dinner together and sometimes I would bring home fancy desserts. We cuddled while watching movies you wanted to watch. Fuck Cas, I was the first one to let you…”

A warm pair of hands rested on his shoulders and shook him. A stern pair of blue eyes stilled him to submissive silence. The grimace across his face pulled his focus back to where it should have been, on Cas, not spiraling into a cavern of self-flagellation.

“I’m sorry. I… I’m here for you, Cas. What can I do to make this better? Make this load you’re carrying less heavy?”

He licked his bottom lip and looked past him, scouring for a solution one hundred miles due east. “I am unsure. I am truly happy to be home, I just see things, hear things, and it’s like I feel you being ripped away from me. I know that’s not how it happened. I know I left you. I abandoned you in a monumentally shifting world without so much as an amateur’s knowledge of angels,” he spat rapidly, his grip tightening on his jacket’s wide shoulders. “I let you down, the man I love. And what harsh punishment did I endure for my crimes? I got to come home to my family! I returned to the welcoming arms of the other man I love! I need to suffer. I need to atone for helping create this bond, reaching across our distance with what little Grace I had and linking it with your soul without knowing the consequences! I deserve…”

Try as he may, he couldn’t relinquish Cas’s grip on him, but he could close their distance with a firm embrace. He hushed him as his words devolved into a rambling sequence of huffs and inhales, not quite tears, his eyes not entirely dry either. “Sshhh, shhh. I got you, Cas.”

“I have no right to miss the layers of scribbled notes spread across your mind,” the peak of his S’s slurred with frustration. “How each time we linked I could hear the typewriter in the corner stamp out a hundred more questions you had for me but wouldn’t ask. You wanted to savor the mystery or just thought you’d annoy me with one question too many,” he let out a deep sigh into the fibers of his increasingly warm button down. At last his vise grip on his shoulders relaxed and he wrapped his arms around his back under his open suit jacket. He thumbed small ovals into his shirt volleying thoughts carelessly into space. A bizarre skewered laugh followed a ragged inhale. “I remember one of your notes from the day we met. It wasn’t long after you resigned yourself to watch me sleep that first night. I couldn’t fight the need any longer. Your working theory was that I was a fighter pilot. That was before you thought I was an extraterrestrial.”

Imagining the agent’s logic derail into that direction stirred a sympathetic laugh. “Can you blame me? I mean what else could someone be if they survived a crash landing? All I had to go off of was this stunning injured man falling in my lap from up high. I should have just counted you as a miracle.”

He cast his eyes up at his for a moment, his attempts at flattery still making their mark. “That’s generous of you to say.”

“Cas, I want you to listen very carefully,” he warned and sat up straighter. Cas tried to pull away, to look him in the eyes, when Dean’s grip tightened. He wasn’t sure if he could pull off his hail mary while looking him in the face. “None of what happened was your fault. I wanted to help you so I did. I wanted to protect you so I did. I wanted to love you so I did, and I’d do it over and over again.” He felt Cas bury his face into his clavicle and hold his breath. Loose droplets seeped into his shirt, so he rubbed his wrinkled breaths flat with his palms. “You didn’t do me wrong, but if you need to hear me say it: I forgive you. So, please forgive yourself.”

Wordless moments expanded into minutes as the gears of their thoughts ground forward. Their back muscles unclenched and Dean divested his jacket now overheating from their lingering embrace. Seriously, was everything from the 50’s made entirely of suffocating wool? He let go of Cas just long enough to kick off his shoes and pull him along onto the bed. The angel wound around his side, his heavy crown cradled on the outside of his pec. Minutes passed with only their harmonizing breaths behind Cas’s closed door. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime with Cas loosely holding him, his frantic mind hushed. So grateful to feel him safe and warm against him, he placed light chaste kisses on his hair. Only warbled warm exhales lead him to believe Cas was awake let alone alive. Perhaps this exhausted him. This whole evening felt like emotional pole-vault. They both deserved a nap. 

The overworked nerves must have been instigating some indigestion though. A peculiar tugging lapped at his stomach, but not quite his stomach. Wait, it felt like it was between his lungs, then everywhere at once. His heartbeat stuttered and his breath grew short like waves escaping to shore. What was this warm echo?

Cas didn’t move a muscle, content to sop up the hunter’s continual caresses over his shoulder blade. It was curious though how after a particularly choppy wave landed around his belly button, he sighed as if in response. Weird timing. The sensation wasn’t painful by any means, but completely alien. Gazing down at Cas, absorbed in the all-encompassing feeling of home draped over him, he pushed it out of focus. The small slow circles on Cas’s back became wide tracks from one large fold in the fabric of his shirt to another, searching along its route for another turn to venture down. A slight rattle hummed through the Cas’s bones beside him. That same frequency reverberated along his ribcage. The buzzing contrasted with the slithering limb working its way about his insides, almost as if it were making the intrusion smoother. Before he could examine its trajectory any further, he heard what sounded like a patting in the battered pillows behind his head. No, it was slightly above the pillow. The circle of sorts formed at the back of his mind where his focus continued to drain, a seal cracked.

Cas’s breath shallowed. About Dean’s ribs the angel’s arm spasmed quietly in the initial throws of unconsciousness.

The hunter breathed in his scent, careful to scoop in a large lungful and hold in it until nature forced him to relinquish his grip. The exhale didn’t stir Cas, but the ring began to quake so violently, he stiffened every muscle under Cas to keep it from waking him. Closing his eyes, the image of a door shaking on its frame loomed larger and larger, the light beyond it shining as softly as early daybreak. Its percussive thrusts were insistent, but lacked malicious intent. A muffled wail spilled in from the crack under the door. Its timbre was comforting, familiar. His frayed nerves wilted, subdued by the voice’s influence. The closer he came to the hole, the light painted his surroundings. For the first time he could make out a lever style doorknob like one leading from a back porch. The lever had resistance as he pushed down, inciting an itch at the corner of his consciousness. The door’s jostling matched the itch’s frequency. The sound of an insect buzzing happily about in lazy absent minded loops grew louder as the lever found its nadir. He pulled the door back and a grand luminescence nearly blinded him. The tendril that searched about his insides found its footing at the doorframe and the space decompressed, sucking the darkness around him into the ether. Sonorous footfalls bounced from the outside in. Never one to trust a mysterious stranger, he reached back into his boot but found no knife, no gun, no implement to defend himself with. For the first time fear ran its fingers to the front of his scalp, its presence far more central to his core than he had ever felt it: no sweaty palms or fight or flight response, but a thick fog of unpleasant anxiousness clouding his judgement. It all felt like emotion without a physical body. Oh god, was this a spell?

A silhouette clarified against the intruding light beyond the open door. The figure was male, lean with an athletic build, short hair, his clothes swaying with no wind to ruffle through them. It was worse than he thought. It felt like he was being probed. Fear’s clutch closed tighter on his shoulders inch by inch. His breath crystalized in the air the moment it left his lips. The man’s footsteps halted a few feet from him and paused at the threshold. The light was so bright he had to close his eyes, but he guarded his face with upturned forearms. He was braced. He was ready. This man’s foreboding presence swatted away the cold daggers of fear’s needling grasp.

“Hello, Dean,” a rich careful tone greeted him.

The light dimmed behind him as he opened his eyes. The angel walked confidently through the doorway and into Dean’s space. The timid nature of his smile foisted his surreal company into the forefront. This casually dressed version of his love hid his hands in his jean pockets and observed him distantly.

“Cas?” he asked in vapid disbelief. A queer sensation interwove itself through him, reversing his course as he thought to open his eyes outside of this place, check to see if Cas was indeed sleeping in his arms.

“Don’t,” he warned.

“What? Don’t do what?” he asked, stepping closer to this Cas feeling slightly less disoriented like stepping closer to a funhouse mirror.

“Don’t open your eyes. I won’t be able to maintain the link if you split your concentration like that.”

“Link? You mean…” he sputtered out taking stock of his surrounds once more. Realization heaved onto his psyche like Sam leaping onto his back when he was a hair too tall and heavy but Dean was too stubborn to rebuke him. So this was the ‘link’, the connection Cas regretted forging with the other Dean when he had to return. Stars peeked out from behind a lapsing sunset stretching all around them. Baby hummed out slow rhythms behind him in the middle distance. Grass crunched beneath their shoes as they took in the temperate scene they found themselves in. “Did I do this or did you?” he asked in awe of its perfect ease, the funhouse mirror now in some other county.

“Oh, this place is all yours,” he turned his face up to revel in it alongside him.

“But it was so dark here a minute ago. Then you walked in and…”

Cas’s sightline slid down to meet his and smirked.

Dean bit his lower lip and felt his cheeks instantly warm. Changing the subject would at least divert his attention.

“You can tell yourself that,” he mused.

“You cocky son of a… never mind. I’m just glad we’re together again, even if it’s in some kind of mind palace.” His right foot brushed against the dry grass just to solicit the expected crunching sound. Everything felt real, but in a completely foreign way his mind kept slipping on whenever he thought he had a proper foothold. “Is this what you and the other one could do?”

“Not exactly. This is spacious, the stimuli much more grounded, less conceptual.” He looked off at the edge of the harvested field. “It was never this enormous. He let me into his mind, but this feels vast, full of slumbering potential,” he said hushed by his reverence. Looking towards the glittering stars, he closed the distance between them and reached out to hold a palm an inch over Dean’s chest. His clear blues danced along the curves of his face with a vague nameless joy he had never seen before. “You finally let me in.”

The skin over his chest seemed to thin, letting them peer at his lightly glowing heart pounding excitedly under the threat of his imminent touch. “Whhoah, Cas. Tell me that was you at least.”

“Only partly,” he responded warmly. Before their flesh could meet, he backed off slightly and took the vibrant glow with him. “What made you change your mind after all this time?”

Disappointment radiated off of him as he backed away, but he nudged past it. He was still having difficulty wrapping his mind around this place, this vivid but tenuous connection. Previously his mind melds were like an oversaturated memory reel forcibly flashed into his cranium. It wasn’t smooth or painless to have a hundred percent of an experience shoved through a ten percent filter, but he endured. The answer sat heavy in Cas’s expression. “The times before were painful and disorienting because I resisted, weren’t they?”

“You know as well as I do that telling you to relax wouldn’t have changed the outcome any.”

He scowled at himself, but all at once he felt like his world was slowly tumbling upside down. His perception wasn’t affected but his stomach dropped and his concentration petered out. “What’s with the rollercoaster action?”

Like a cord was yanked, Cas flew backwards through the open doorway and his eyes tugged open bringing the grey swirling ceiling back into focus. Cas began to stir on top of him and stretched until his limbs shook as if he had been hibernating for longer than a few minutes. Dean looked at the clock in disbelief. How could two hours have passed since he changed into this getup? 

A grin graced his lips as he reached the height of his stretch and collapsed back into Dean. “That was an incredible nap. Thank you for your services as an excellent pillow.”

“Well, I’ll add that ringing little endorsement to my resume,” he smirked.

He rose up into his elbows and bit at his bottom lip. “Can I have my Dean back now?”

His core burst and melted all at once hearing Cas refer to him, this Earthly him as ‘his’. Endorphins flooded his chest sending tingles up from his heart and down past his knees. This was for Cas though. He had to be sure. “Are you sure there’s nothing else you need to say to the agent?”

He shook his head enthusiastically. “Something tells me you won’t mind getting all dolled up for me again if I think of something.”

“I think I can make that happen if you ask real nice.” He detangled their limbs even though he loathed to, but he had to go get changed out of this cumbersome costume. A quick shower to scrub the sweat off couldn’t hurt either.

He made it a hair’s breadth from the door when he bade him to wait. The air in the room started to thicken. Warm arms turned him around to take his outfit apart, committing it to memory as each piece hit the floor.

Dean dipped down to kiss him, but was refuted. “Come on, Cas. I’m starving for you. Please.”

The dark haired angel continued to undress him achingly slowly, squeezing every button through its hole before removing that article of clothing. “You’re not the one I want yet,” he said, monitoring the folds of fabric sheepishly.

At first the fact that he wanted them both was a sore grievance he couldn’t force over his lips. Now with Cas’s warm fingers pushing and pulling at thickly woven garments he visualized it again: Cas with another him. While it was unnatural to imagine himself as an outsider, the image it conjured wasn’t completely unpleasant. In fact it was unbelievably hot like a vigorously stoked furnace took up residence at his core. Mid-bemusement one of those warm hands pushed him back onto the bed so he could remove more clothing unimpeded. He wasn’t sure if it was the temperature of his hands or the absence of his touch that cast goosebumps up his hide. Now pantsless, he shivered as Cas pulled his sock over his heel. “Even the socks, Cas?”

He gave his nude foot a silent peck of appreciation and moved onto the next.

It was so thorough and careful and entirely Cas, to spy that even his undergarments were out of time. Perhaps wearing the old timey underpants as well was unnecessary, but they were clean and his sense of adventure wasn’t limited to death defying creature kills and deep fried foods. How good was other Dean’s cholesterol levels, he wondered. A firm yank at the hem of his long bleach white underpants wrenched his attention back to the Cas at hand. He scrambled back up onto his butt and yanked the waistband above his nethers. “Woah, there. Not that I’m not super eager to get back onto the swing of your thing, but are you sure, you want to…” he stumbled into a cud-de-sac of worry. “I just, want to make sure you’re ready.”

As a stealthy predator stalks much smaller prey, Cas crawled over him as he crab walked back towards the headboard in clumsy retreat. The hasty regroup was halted when his head collided against the stained wooden panel with an echoing ‘thonk’. His concentrated stare appreciating the angles of Dean’s face showed nothing but a solitary focus. At the last moment, he leaned to the side, pulling the bedside table drawer open to fish something out. An opened bottle of lube appeared in Dean’s peripheral vision as Cas pulled it over his body and tossed it down beside them.

“Oh,” he said settling back into the notion. “Oh! You want to… now?”

“Not yet,” he responded flicking his eyes down to the offensive garment and back up at his face.

“Don’t let me stop you then,” he smirked and lifted his ass up to make extraction easier.

Those same toasty hands wrenched them free and tossed them in a random direction, the article forgotten as soon as it left his grasp. He dove eagerly face first into Dean, sparing the nervous gestures of re-acquaintance for another day. His chapped lips worked Dean’s open, hunting for the smooth glide of his favorite tongue. Dean obliged, wrapping his cooling calves around the back of Cas’s to pull him into his embrace as far as he could manage. Their merciless kisses reacquainted them in a way words remained insufficient for. Toned forearms tugged and slid over flesh creating more visceral needs faster than they anticipated, but maybe all the anticipation did its part, too. Cas’s deft caresses and confident thrusts against his aching member sent his body quaking. His blood pooled south, forcing him to close his eyes and ride sensations until he was rock hard, biting his lower lip to quell its embarrassing urgency. The plastic pop of the cap didn’t escape his notice, and soon a slick hand encircled his shaft. A thin gasp leaked from his lips before Cas parted his clenched teeth and swallowed it eagerly. Those talented five fingers slathered his sensitive darkening head down to wiry curls with slippery lube and moved on to his own, stroking them together how he had last done what felt like years before. That white heat felt magnificent, saturating past his skin into his muscles and bones, liquefying them into trusting submission. Beautiful grunts and moans above him propelled him to pick up pace, pump into his closed fist faster and harder.

In his absence he had only pushed past his clenched fist a handful of times, mainly to settle his urges more than he wanted to sing broken curses to his room’s grey ceiling in sympathetic reverie remembering Cas’s adept intimate touch. He had no want for it without those tidal blues staring holes right into his soul as neon white pleasures pulsed out of him wildly. Now having gone so long without them, he chased his orgasm too hastily. Already he regretted they couldn’t take their time, make this the long awaited occasion he gave himself over completely to Cas’s tender exploratory touch. The frenetic chaos of sensuous stimuli had him almost cresting when he caught a glimpse of his lust ravaged love thrusting all the way into him for the first time in his mind’s eye. With that fullness, that sheer unflappable unity of their whole beings, he came hard over the top of Cas’s agile grip. Four slippery pumps against Dean’s spill later Cas tensed over him, painting Dean’s torso with his own spend in erratic pulses. It may not have been the soul searing coalescence he sought, but it cemented them back into one time, one place amongst all the worlds and all their possibilities. Even before his breathing evened out, he reclaimed Dean’s slippery lips to scatter open mouthed kisses across them blissfully. With labored breaths, he leaned up greedily to return his affections, searching the texture of his mouth for adequate words of praise. Inspiration never struck, but tried in vain until they needed to part for air.

Cas cleaned them up with more unexpected bedside supplies, which left him with a heap of asinine questions. All were abated when he snaked around Dean’s middle undoubtedly seeking security in his embrace. His thin hand-me-down pillow was years beyond being useful supporting their heads even in name alone. The hunter kvetched inwardly that they should be in their bed, comforted by their ample pillows and untattered blankets, not in this sparse excuse for a bedroom. Along with warm puffs of air, he could feel Cas’s eyes on the back of his neck. “Not trying to put my foot in my mouth here, but you have the power of speech back. What’s on your mind, Cas?”

The point of his chilly nose swept against his spine twice, drawing his meditations into a focused point. Once it held firm a large exhale brushed down his bare shoulder blade. “The absence has left a chasm between us which I never intended to let grow, but I failed. I should have relied on you, expressed how much pain I was experiencing. Ultimately I sided on not wanting to burden you though it made the situation worse,” he whispered, clinging more closely to his body. Contemplative nerves radiated past Cas’s fingers into Dean’s chest where they hovered. “Why did you do all this for me?”

Instinctively he needed to calm his vestigial worries, so he interwove their fingers to ground their wavering confidence. The angel continued to try to stroke his skin, but he halted the ministrations. “I know I don’t pick up on these things as fast as Sam,” he admitted listlessly. “When it comes to you though, instead of letting you fill in the blanks, I spent a lot of time filling them in for you. Especially while you were gone, I made rash decisions… I rushed to action without thinking clearly. Again, I tried to fill in the blanks when you wouldn’t give me any obvious clues. Sam helped me see that you weren’t getting better on your own. This whole roleplay plan was the navel gazing moose’s idea. I’d like to think it helped us fill in some of those blanks together though.” He tilted his ear towards him hoping for a positive rejoinder.

“Huh,” he deadpanned.

Pulsing reassurance through his grip on Cas’s hands, he admitted, “I’m glad I gave it a try, though. Seriously, if you need me to do it again, I’m up for it. You don’t even have to tear me out of my clothes at the end,” he joked. Cas’s speechlessness unnerved him after a few moments. “Gonna leave me hanging here?”

“It just leaves me to wonder if Sam has always been this instrumental in our relationship.”

He released his hands quickly and rolled over to face the broody faced angel. “Please don’t mention my brother when we’re naked in bed.” He gave him a peck on the corner of his lips and smiled. “It’s just bad form.”

His particular brand of eye roll made a triumphant return. “Excuse the faux pas, but didn’t you bring him up first?”

He smiled mischievously, drowning their heartfelt moment into a fluttering attacks at each other’s weak points until the threat of cold cement on sex warmed flesh became too perilous. “I say we gather everything you need out of these four walls and get back to our room. These terrible flapjack pillows are just gonna wreck our necks. I want us to wake up tomorrow morning – after the best night of sleep I’ll have gotten in forever – bright eyed and rested. We’ve got time to make up for and I have plans for us.”

Cas’s skepticism returned. “That sounds ominous.”

“You’ll just have to see,” he offered happily. Without an exact plan, he weighed the many ideas he dreamt up against each other of how he would show his angel how much he loved the ass off of him. Through the consternation and denial and anxiety, he imagined the moment he would reappear in front of him as a joyous event that deserved coordinated celebration. In practice, he could hardly have listed all the amorous ways he imagined them having each other with wild abandon the moment Cas actually crash landed. After all, Sam was literally standing right there and inquiries had to be made. The leisurely drive to a picturesque secluded waterfront cabin in the Northwest followed by a week of athletic lovemaking was a mighty fine place to start, though. 

Cas rudely interrupted his salacious interlude by peeling the blanket back in search of discarded clothing. “Well, let’s begin then. Will we have time to make a supply run tomorrow?”

“Of course. In the meantime, you can use anything you want of mine if you’re needing mortal supplies like toiletries and stuff,” he flung his legs over the side of the bed and assured him.

“I was thinking more of ingredients for vegetarian lasagna.”

“Gross,” he spat. “Why in the world would I allow that in our kitchen?” Warm palms laced into the back of Cas’s pants as he stood to pull them up over his stunning backside. The laugh coughed from his lungs melted Dean’s heart into a fuzzy kiln. Unexpected awe filled up past his eyeballs, cementing him in place. That feeling burrowed into his very soul, healing his wounds; including ones put there by aforementioned culinary atrocities.

“I am quite practiced in the kitchen now. I would be delighted to show you both what I can make. Showing Sam the gratitude I feel for helping me – helping us is very important. I believe with my current abilities I could make something to even rival your manicotti stuffed shells.”

Dean extracted his heated palms from Cas’s backside and retorted playfully, “That’ll be the day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking with the story so far. Onto the finale!
> 
> Follow me @OssuYaoiReview on Twitter and Instagram. I post MxM comic/manga micro-reviews there. I also post story headers on the Insta when I complete fics here on AO3, or you can subscribe here to never miss a chapter.


	14. What a Difference a Day Made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner and a movie.

The praise following dinner the next evening left him quite chuffed. He imagined Dean had never enjoyed the taste of crow so much as he beamed over his Cas’s newfound mastery of what was previously his domain in the Bunker. Jokes passed over the table that Dean’s nesting days hovering over the immaculately clean prep table were numbered. His brother cackled when he offered to be Cas’s prep cook whenever he wanted help making more complicated recipes. Sam insisted they go pick out a movie to digest to while he cleaned up, but Cas insisted on at least drying the dishes to speed along the process. Once they were alone, his secret plan was to thank Sam for well, everything without Dean’s embarrassed interference. Not only did he keep Dean’s head above water when he was away, he worked with Dean to tackle getting him home the way they had many times before, but he ensured Dean had support every step of the way. In the end the plan was foiled though, as Dean had other ideas. He yanked him out of the kitchen and practically nipped at his heels herding him down to the cave. 

The instant both sock clad feet landed on the cool flooring, Dean spun him around to press live wire pecks firmly against his cheeks. He pinned his spine squarely against the textured wall and angled his head then planted a line of slow close mouthed kisses down his neck. While he kept tight lipped about the plans he mentioned the day before, he didn’t hesitate to shower him with furtive caresses and lip first affections all day long. Neither hormone addled nor lust ridden, the attention carried a concentrated emotional load they dispersed into the universe one touch at a time. Closing the distance time took from them with stolen glances and naked affection, the burden seemed to ease. Just as true was Dean’s perverse joy discomforting Sam at being caught.

They fired up the last entry in a horror trilogy they had previously neglected to finish and waited for Sam to join them. Neither one of them were that invested in the pulpy gore fest, though. Dean had seen it so many times alone in hotel rooms as an adolescent he could quote the scream queen’s tired refrains that he often did during the previous two flicks. For his part, Cas knew he would spend a large portion of the film staring at Dean out of the corner of his eye, the reality of his return and re-assimilation into their lives being an opportunity he wouldn’t squander with such tenuously plotted fare.

Dean’s knee bounced up impatiently as the snippet of the film replayed on its title card a third time. “If he takes any longer I swear I’m gonna…” He eyes swept back to meet Cas’s then stalled out.

“How about I go get us a drink while we wait, then?” he asked, already shuffling off of his spot beside the flummoxed hunter and stretched to the ceiling. Upon his descent he caught wooded green eyes crawling up his shirt and down his body absently. “Beer?” he coaxed.

He reclined back against the couch cushions and nodded. “We’re starting in five with or without him. But hey, if he doesn’t show we’ll see if you can pry me off of you before the first creepy synthesizer solo.”

Delighted fluttery wings lit up his insides in reply. He smiled so wide his cheeks ached. Small crinkles speckled the corners of his eyes. “Your terms sound acceptable,” he laughed. Rummaging through the beers they had stocked in his mind, he headed up the stairs, passing his friend at the end of the main floor hallway.

With a large mitt over the bottom half of his phone and whispered, “I gotta take this. You two start without me.” He listened to what sounded like angry ranting for another moment and added, “This may take a while.”

“You need help?”

He shook his head vigorously, sending his bangs gliding over his face. He curled the right side back behind his ear and returned to his rote pacing.

He continued on to the large refrigerator choosing a hoppy hefeweisen for Dean and an IPA for himself. It was too soon after a big meal to drink anything heavier, after all.

Passing back out of the kitchen, he surveyed the library out of habit. One or all of them could be found in varying states of agitation, eyes locked on one of the millions of pages found within its walls at virtually any point in time. In the back corner resting on the brown leather reading chair’s overstuffed seat, he spotted a solitary large tome hanging off the edge narrowly escaping the effects of gravity. Sam’s bright green spell notebook was wedged between its pages. Minding the perpetual lack of coasters he had yet to rectify, he sat the bottles on the floor and lifted the book by its spine. It was a Greek treatise on the more radical rituals practiced by the followers of Horae. He wiped the condensation from his free hand and leafed through the pages stopping on the pages detailing ingredients and steps for one of the rituals. Regarding their misunderstandings of the primarily principles of how time - and by extrapolation - heavenly bodies worked as a nearly immortal angel prickled at his scalp. Having lived as a mortal, he could empathize with their misguided conclusions. Merely placing a handful of small mammal innards in a bowl and setting them ablaze created a spectacle, but was hardly impactful to the space around it beyond the often unpleasant smell. He flipped through several more spells dealing in crop growth rate augmentation, slowing worshipper’s experience of time, and others primarily resulting in the ingestion of toxic or hallucinogenic concoctions with diminishing interest. The last spell of the book required twice the ingredients and incantations length many times longer than the prior entries. Loosely translated it aimed to pull a godly entity from their home shrine to a place they were most needed, absent of their fruitful influence. He speculated the impromptu pilgrimages for their goddesses had some other significance he overlooked. Having been a god-like entity before, he imagined it wouldn’t have pleased them to find themselves in an unknown land sent by inebriated worshippers. It would explain why after a certain point the goddesses just disappeared from the lore, never to be worshipped again while other gods had simply fallen out of fashion and were left by the wayside of often studied but widely ridiculed ancient human religion.

A string loosely looped around a nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach. He flipped through the densely filled pages of Sam’s handwritten notes. Ingredient lists with strikeouts, incantation excerpts with circled passages, pigmented smudges of aromatic stains, and long suppositions punctuated with unprovable theories all led to one conclusion. This cobbled together spell was indeed performed and had succeeded, just not in the way Sam intended.

Just as he found it, he arranged the notes and book back where they were and listened for Sam pacing right where he had been grumbling into the phone. With sweating beers in hand, he walked past him again, gauging his distracted mien for guilt or knowledge of his mistake but came away with only embarrassed grumbling at whoever was on the other end of the conversation. They exchanged a nod and he carried on back down the stairs. The same snippet of terrified bloodcurdling shrieks replayed as he entered the room.

His mind flashed back to his equally beautiful partner decked out in extra tattoos and clothes so snug they left very little to the imagination. The rich colors of the screen bounced off of his face in the dim rec room, giving him a subtle glow. He admired the spectacle with the same reverence weeks before then again millions of miles away. Comfort suffused his Grace, echoing affection down the corridor of their own newly created connection. At its furthest end, a freshly stained oak door stood ajar.

Dean turned his head, his expression softening the second his eyes locked with Cas’s. “Took you a bit. Find me something good?”

He swatted the nagging truth behind his exile away for tomorrow’s Cas to deal with. Soaking in the tingling glow of Dean’s attention, he handed a warming bottle off. “Sorry, I was distracted. You said you liked this one.” He returned to his space beside him, only to be pulled closer with an insistent tugging forearm. Nothing blissful resignation washed over him cozying up into Dean’s very warm territorial bubble once again. If he played his cards right, maybe this time they could finish what they started in that very spot all those weeks ago. Even if they didn’t get the opportunity, he was still home and that was more than enough for today.

He took a pull of his beer with a chipper inhale and placed a brief kiss on the side of his head. “It’s perfect. No Sammy, huh?”

The angel nestled into his side as the opening credit’s white lettering scrolled down the screen. “Lucky me.”

“Nah, lucky us,” he corrected.

Just as he predicted he spent the next eighty-odd minutes playing doe-eyed chicken with his love amidst the terrorized wails of a busty short-haired scream queen. The higher the tallies went for the times Dean caught him, the more thorough his punitive kisses became. As the ending credits rolled, their lips swelled from studious overuse, but neither one of them would dare stop. The black copyright screen was left on pause in the dimly lit room, making it difficult to make out anything past the faces in front of them. He couldn’t imagine anything other than the freckled coy smile inches from his mattering in that moment. Somewhere in the back of his mind a draft wafted a dry summer grassy scent into his nostrils. Lucid but unfocused eyes stared at his lips but also a hundred highway miles past him. Cas followed that smell down a narrow windblown corridor to stand in front of a half open doorway. His heart stumbled as he felt his familiar voice stroke the jagged edges of his mangled Grace from behind its heavy frame.

“Welcome home, Cas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for sticking it out until the end. I greatly appreciate the kudos and comments. From here I plan on a couple of one-shots before I return to the "A Side" storyline. What did you think? Did you guys like the "A Side" or "B Side" better?
> 
> Follow me @OssuYaoiReview on Twitter and Instagram. I post MxM comic/manga micro-reviews there. I also post story headers on the Insta when I complete fics here on AO3, or you can subscribe here to never miss a chapter.


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